Birth control is becoming a fierce new political battleground

Democrats are leaning toward protecting birth control as part of their reproductive rights campaign, seeking to emphasize Republican efforts that oppose protections many voters say they support.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.) plans to hold a vote next month on the Right to Contraception Act.

The effort will likely be blocked, but Democrats want Republicans to be informed about contraception, especially as the GOP struggles with how to convey its position on reproductive rights in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade.

Republicans blocked the same legislation last year, arguing it was written to protect abortion medications and not contraceptives.

Polls consistently show that there is broad bipartisan support for birth control. According to Gallup’s annual Values ​​and Beliefs Survey released last year, 88 percent of Americans said birth control was morally acceptable.

More recently, a February impact survey commissioned by Americans for Contraception found that contraception mobilizes voters who are currently less enthusiastic about elections, including young Hispanic voters and women and voters of color.

Most Republicans argue that birth control is not at risk and that people who oppose it are a small minority. They say bills to protect access solve problems that don’t exist and are attempts to score political points.

“If that’s the case, I don’t know why you don’t just support a bill that doesn’t matter anyway and make the issue go away instead of giving ammunition to Democrats,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at University of Washington. California, Davis School of Law and a leading scholar of abortion policy.

Former President Trump this week brought the issue back into the national spotlight when he indicated in a television interview that he would leave contraception policy up to the states, but supported efforts to limit access.

The presumptive GOP nominee quickly backtracked on social media, saying, “I have never advocated and will never advocate imposing restrictions on birth control or other contraceptives.”

Trump then went further, saying: “I do not support banning birth control, nor will the Republican Party.”

But recent moves by Republican state lawmakers and governors tell a different story and have increased the sense of urgency for reproductive rights advocates and Democrats.

In Arizona earlier this year, Republicans unanimously blocked legislation to protect the right to contraception. In Tennessee, House Republicans voted down a bill in committee that would have clarified that the state’s abortion ban does not threaten access to contraceptive care or fertility treatments.

In Missouri, a comprehensive bill to support women’s health care — including strengthening access to contraception — was stalled for months because Republicans falsely confused birth control with abortion medication.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights research group, during this legislative session, legislators from 27 states introduced more than 59 bills and proposed constitutional changes that would codify the right to access contraception.

Only the Democrat-controlled Virginia legislature was able to pass legislation that would have codified the right to contraception in the state constitution.

But Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) vetoed the bill, saying he supported the right to contraception but was concerned about the bill’s implications for religious freedom. He also said in his veto message that the measure would have interfered with parental rights.

Ziegler said Youngkin’s veto message highlights the problem with the GOP’s messaging.

“They’re in favor of the right to contraception, but they’re really ambivalent about what that means,” she said.

Democrats seek to capitalize on the broader issue of reproductive rights beyond abortion, and see Trump’s comments and state-level fights over contraception as examples of how potent the issue can be.

“Contraception should be a non-negotiable reproductive right, but Republican lawmakers in state legislatures are pivoting to birth control as their latest goal,” said Heather Williams, chair of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.

“Contraception empowers Americans to choose whether and how to build their families – Republican lawmakers deserve no role in shaping these decisions,” she added.

Mainstream anti-abortion groups say they are neutral on birth control and say there are no problems with access.

“Medicare and Medicaid cover it. Title [the federal family planning program] focuses on that. And for years we were sold the apparently false narrative that Planned Parenthood somehow had everything under control. Can we get our nearly $700 million back from Planned Parenthood if they drop the ball?” said Kristi Hamrick, chief policy strategist at Students for Life of America.

But access on the ground is a different story.

“We don’t have broad access to the full range of contraceptive methods for everyone in this country, especially for people who are struggling to survive,” said Rachel Fey, vice president of strategic policy at Power to Decide, an organization that advocates for sexual choice. and reproductive.

Title X, the federal grant program that supports family planning services for low-income women, has seen flat funding since fiscal year 2014, making it unable to meet the growing demand for family planning services.

In Texas, a federal judge ruled that Title X clinics cannot provide contraception to teenagers without parental consent. The state has also started Medicaid Planned Parenthood clinics, so low-income women have limited options.

This year, Indiana required hospitals to offer access to long-term contraception for new mothers on Medicaid. But it removed the IUD from the law because Republicans considered intrauterine devices abortive.

There have been concerns about access to birth control long before the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, but experts say the decision has made it more difficult to separate the issue of contraception from the politics of abortion.

“That’s really the dilemma of the Republican Party,” Ziegler said. “I think most Republicans would say they are in favor of contraception. But there are deeper disagreements about what contraception is.”

Fey noted that there is a parallel between the erosion of abortion rights and what is happening with contraception.

“People understand all the nuances in which abortion exists in their lives and the lives of their loved ones. And I think the same applies to contraception,” she said, so it’s not an issue that needs much more “nurturing.”

“I think there is an acute threat right now. And you know, this threat reflects, in many ways, how we got to where we are when it comes to abortion access in this country.”

This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story