‘What Republicans Are Threatening to Do Will Really Scare America’: Republicans Tank Birth Control Bill
Move sets up election issue for Democrats
In a move Democrats certainly will employ as a powerful issue in this year’s elections, Senate Republicans blocked legislation that would safeguard access to birth control and contraceptives.
By a vote of 51-39, Republican senators upheld a filibuster of Democratic Sen Ed Markey’s Right to Contraception Act.
The right to birth control was established by the Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut. But, like the landmark Roe v Wade decision in the matter of abortion rights, the high court could decide to reverse Griswold and upend more than a half century of access to contraceptives.
Although 8 in 10 Americans say access to contraception is deeply important to them and 90 percent think birth control should be legal in all or most cases, several states restrict access to contraceptives by eliminating public funding for it, defining abortion broadly enough to include contraception, and allowing health care providers to deny service related to contraception on the basis of their own beliefs, according to supporters of the bill that failed Wednesday.
President Biden immediately condemned the effort to block the Right to Contraception Act.
“Senate Republicans just refused to protect a woman’s right to birth control. This is the second time since the Supreme Court’s extreme decision to overturn Roe v. Wade that Congressional Republicans have refused to safeguard this fundamental right for women in every state. It’s unacceptable,” Biden said in a statement. “Today’s vote comes two days before the 59th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, which established that the fundamental right to privacy protects the ability to make deeply personal decisions free from the interference of politicians, including to access contraception. Two years ago, the Court put that right in jeopardy by overturning Roe v. Wade and taking away a woman’s constitutional right to choose.
“Since then, Republicans have doubled down. Republican elected officials’ extreme agenda—which is at odds with the majority of Americans—continues to undermine access to reproductive health care, from abortion to contraception to in vitro fertilization,” the Biden statement added. “Dangerous abortion bans are forcing health care providers to close, disrupting access to critical health care services. Republican officials continue to try to restrict access to birth control and to defund federal programs that help women access contraception.”
Markey’s Democratic colleague from Massachusetts, Sen Elizabeth Warren, answered Republicans like Sen Katie Britt, of Alabama, who called the vote on the legislation a “scare tactic.”
“What she is really saying is, ‘If we talk about what the Republicans are threatening to do, we really will scare America,’ and I think that’s right,” Warren said. “Look at it this way: What have the Republicans done so far? Well, they told us to an a half years ago nobody would touch Roe v Wade. Donald Trump gets this extremist Supreme Court in place and the first chance they get they pitch out Roe v Wade. They don’t take a little bite out of it. They just throw the whole thing out and while they are throwing it out, [Justice] Clarence Thomas says, ‘As long as we are throwing it out, let’s take a look at throwing out Griswold,’ which 10 years earlier had protected access to contraception.
“In addition to that, the speaker of the House and a majority of Republicans in the House of Representatives are cosponsors on a bill about life begins at conception that would actually make illegal certain forms of contraception: IUDs and Plan B,” she added. “In addition to that there are extremist group out there that are aggressively lobbying to take away access to contraception and then we’ve got Donald Trump himself who just two weeks ago said he was going to take a look at putting restrictions on contraception and then as if all of that were not enough, understand that today in the United States Senate, all but two Republicans, when given a chance to vote on what about a federal law to protect access to contraception, that is all the bill really said.”
A Democratic senator running for reelection this year in a swing state clearly believes that this is a powerful political issue.
“Wisconsinites have said loud and clear that they want the right to control their own bodies, families, and futures without interference by judges or politicians. Unfortunately for millions of women, that right is no longer certain,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who is running for reelection in Wisconsin. “When the activist Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and stripped women of the right to choose, they also put the right to contraception on the chopping block. I am not willing to let Wisconsin women lose another freedom and we must safeguard Americans’ right to access contraception regardless of where they live. I urge my colleagues from both parties to stand with the vast majority of Americans who want to protect access to safe, effective contraception.”
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