Republicans’ attempt to target a Washington, DC law protecting workers’ reproductive rights is jeopardizing a budget bill that GOP leadership hopes to pass later this month.
Moderate Republicans in the House have a problem with an amendment to the annual Financial Services and Government Finance Act (FSGG) that provides funding for the District, including emergency planning, security costs and other programs. The amendment seeks to repeal a local law that protects workers from discrimination by employers based on their reproductive health choices, such as abortion or contraceptive exploit.
The proposal was one of the reasons House Republicans struggled to pass the same funding bill last year, and if it remains that way, the bill could lose support from moderates this time around too.
“I voted against the bill last year for a number of reasons, including this one, and I continue to oppose this provision,” Rep. Nick Lalota (R-N.Y.) told The Hill this week. “If it stays in the bill, I will vote against it again.”
“I definitely don’t want to see this provision in there,” said MP Marc Molinaro (RN.Y.) this week, adding that he had also expressed his concerns about the measure to party leadership and hoped they would “take it into consideration.”
The latest comments underscore the uncertainty surrounding the bill’s chances, as Republicans are expected to prepare a vote on the legislation before Congress goes into a month-long recess next month. Given the Republicans’ razor-thin majority and the unlikelihood of many The party switch and moderate opposition from Democrats jeopardize the funding bill’s chances of passage.
The annual FSGG spending bill is one of 12 full-year funding plans the House is working to pass by month’s end as both chambers await the government shutdown deadline at the end of September.
So far, the Republican-led House has passed a third of its government spending bills for fiscal year 2025. The measures – which include funding for agencies such as the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Veterans Affairs – passed largely along partisan lines, with Democrats pushing for more funding for non-defense programs and denouncing numerous partisan amendments as “poison pills.”
But supporters say some of these amendments would also pose an crucial test for Republicans in the months leading up to the November election, especially as Democrats continue to attack the other side on issues such as reproductive rights, assisted reproduction and abortion.
“This is absolutely a test of how members feel about access to sexual and reproductive health care,” said Karen Stone, vice president of public policy and government relations at Planned Parenthood Action Fund, in an interview as part of the discussion of the FSGG bill and the party’s other spending proposals.
“These bills target abortion. They target birth control,” she said, arguing that the bills target a broad “spectrum of sexual and reproductive health services, and I think the attitude people have toward these provisions is absolutely telling.”
Republicans have targeted DC’s law, also known as the Reproductive Health Nondiscrimination Act of 2014, for years. defend their fight as one for religious freedom, while Democrats warn that rolling back religious freedom could lead to the firing of a Washington staffer. for an abortion.
The vote, which is expected to take place shortly after lawmakers return to Washington following the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin next week, comes at a time when even former President Trump has attempted to walk a tightrope on the issue, despite recently In remarks to religious conservatives, he praised the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Republicans in Congress have also refrained from calling for a nationwide ban on abortion in the years following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which stripped Americans of their federal right to abortion.
Many instead called for such measures to be left to the states, as polls show solid support for abortion access across the country. Opinion poll A study conducted this spring by the Pew Research Center found that 57 percent of respondents who identified themselves as Republican or Republican-leaning supported access to abortion in most or all cases.
But advocates have questioned that position, pointing in particular to the party’s efforts to target Washington’s reproductive health law.
“I think this is actually a really damaging combination of anti-abortion and anti-home rule for the District, in some ways anti-democratic,” Katie O’Connor, senior director for federal abortion policy at the National Women’s Law Center, told The Hill this week.
Stone also said, “In particular, the Reproductive Health Nondiscrimination Act amendment in the FSGG bill is an attempt to prevent the enforcement of a law passed by the Washington DC City Council.”
“This is explicitly against local rights and deprives people living in a jurisdiction of the right to make decisions that affect them,” Stone said.
Updated at 7:59 a.m. EDT
