It was two years ago this month when Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly condemned the ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 case that struck down a state law that restricted married couples’ access to birth control, calling for it to be “reconsidered.” The far-right jurist had a lot of company: Around the same time, a variety of Republican senators and candidates were also eagerly rejecting the Griswold precedent.
The Democrats’ Right To Contraception Act soon followed. The idea was rather straightforward: The legislation would codify in federal law American’s right to obtain and use contraceptives.
It passed the House in July 2022, but the vote was far closer than it should’ve been: 195 Republicans voted against it. (Eight GOP members supported the bill, though several of them have since left Congress.) The measure advanced to the Senate, where it withered, unable to overcome a Republican filibuster.
This year, Democrats tried again. The results were familiar. NBC News reported:
Senate Republicans blocked legislation Wednesday that would enshrine a federal right to access contraception, sinking the Democratic-led measure. The vote on the Right To Contraception Act was 51-39, falling short of the 60 votes needed to defeat a filibuster and move forward in the chambers Republicans said the bill is unnecessary as the use of birth control is already protected under Supreme Court precedent.
Note, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who’s championed the bill, switched his vote to “no” for procedural reasons, offering him the option of bringing back the legislation for another vote later this year.
One of the more common complaints from GOP senators ahead of the vote was that Democrats were merely “fear-mongering,” pushing the legislation as an election-year stunt. Since contraception access isn’t in peril, Republicans argued, the Right to Contraception Act is wholly unnecessary.
The truth, however, isn’t nearly that simple.
Even if one is inclined to disregard Justice Thomas and other critics of the Griswold precedent, the threat to Americans’ access to birth control exists far outside Democratic Party talking points.
It was just last month, for example, when Donald Trump surprised many by confirming — out loud, on camera, and on the record — that he was “looking at” possible restrictions on contraception.
This is the same Republican who, while in office, made it more difficult for many to obtain contraception. As Politico reported last month, the Trump administration allowed “more employers to opt out of birth control coverage in their workers’ health insurance” and imposed “restrictions on the Title X family planning program that triggered a mass exodus of clinics.”
What’s more, as a Washington Post report explained today, there have been all kinds of relevant and unsettling developments unfolding at the state level. Republican lawmakers in Missouri blocked a bill to widen access to birth-control pills by falsely claiming they induce abortions. An antiabortion group in Louisiana killed legislation to enshrine a right to birth control by inaccurately equating emergency contraception with abortion drugs. An Idaho think tank focused on “biblical activism” is pushing state legislators to ban access to emergency contraception and intrauterine devices (IUDs) by mislabeling them as “abortifacients.”
The same report added that in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s demise, many on the right have also tried to curtail birth-control access “by sowing misinformation about how various methods work to prevent pregnancy.” What’s more, Politico reported that under the “Project 2025” blueprint, a prospective second Trump administration is likely to “require coverage of natural family planning methods and remove requirements that insurance cover certain emergency contraception.” The same report added, “As part of their 2025 wish list, conservatives want to overhaul which forms of birth control insurance companies must cover for patients at no cost under the Affordable Care Act. For instance, they have drafted plans to allow insurers to drop coverage of the emergency contraceptive pill Ella, which some on the right believe is an abortifacient.” This is not, in other words, an election-season abstraction. The latest national survey from KFF, released in March, found that one in five adults believes the right to contraception is now in danger. Those concerns are well grounded, and they were ignored by Senate Republicans today.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
Latest Post
Recommended
