The Senate will vote on a bill to protect access to contraception today. The bill is expected to fail because it’s unlikely Republicans will support it, and it will need some GOP support to pass.
The Right to Contraception Act – introduced by Sens. Ed Markey (D-MA), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), and Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) – would guarantee a legal right for people to obtain and use contraception, including condoms, hormonal birth control, intrauterine devices (IUDs), and vasectomies.
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The bill would ban the federal and state governments from restricting access to contraception, but it wouldn’t require any healthcare provider or employer to cover contraception.
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said that the bill would come up for a vote today, just weeks before the two-year anniversary of when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and, with it, the federal right to an abortion.
“Decades after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the constitutional right to access contraception, this same right is being threatened for millions of Americans as a result of Republicans’ successful efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade,” the statement says.
“Economic, social, and personal freedom are attacked when the right to contraception comes under attack. We’ve seen this Supreme Court willingly overturn decades of legal precedent to peel back reproductive rights, and we are unwilling to stand by as threats to the right to contraception escalate. The solution is to protect the right to contraception by passing our Right to Contraception Act.“
Surveys show that most Americans support keeping contraception legal, this bill isn’t a slam dunk. Democrats have a slim 51-seat majority in the Senate, and the bill would need 60 votes to go to cloture so it can pass under current Senate rules. That means that at least nine Republican senators would have to vote for it in addition to all the Senate Democrats.
A memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) told Senate Republicans to say that they support birth control access and to call the bill an attempt “to make this a campaign issue and scare voters because [Democrats] can’t talk about their failed policies on every other issue,” Axios reports.
They told the senators to instead talk about a different bill introduced by Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R-IA) Allowing Greater Access to Safe and Effective Contraception Act. Ernst accuses the Democratic bill of taking away “parental rights” and limiting “religious freedoms” without explaining how the Democratic bill does so.
While there are not currently any states attempting to ban birth control, IVF has already come under fire due to Republican attacks on abortion rights. Earlier this year, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos produced in order to undergo the fertility treatments are unborn children under state law, which threatened to stop IVF treatments in the state.
