Senate Republicans Put a Stop to the Right to Contraception Act
This article was originally published in Once Upon a Hill.
By Michael Jones
Yesterday, Senate Democrats failed to advance a bill that would protect access to all forms of FDA-approved birth control.
The 51–39 vote on the Right to Contraception Act, which fell below the 60-vote threshold to begin debate on the legislation, comes ahead of the two-year anniversary later this month of the Dobbs decision that overturned the federal right to abortion care and the anniversary this Friday of Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court case that established the fundamental right to contraception.
Nine Republicans did not vote. Sen. Bob Menendez (N.J.), who is attending his corruption trial in Manhattan, is the only Democrat who missed the vote.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the bill’s lead sponsor, said ahead of the vote that passage would have sent an unequivocal message about health freedom and justice for all Americans.
“The right to contraception would help us unwind help us unwind decades of reproductive coercion facilitated by bad Supreme Court decisions, attacks on reproductive justice and divestment in the health care of Black, brown, immigrant; LGBTQ, disabled, low-income and rural Americans,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), told reporters yesterday morning. “It would help us undo the legacy of forced birth and medical experimentation on enslaved women, involuntary sterilization of disabled Americans, and the coercive testing of Black and Puerto Rican women.”
Mazie Hirono, a Democratic senator from Hawaii, said Republicans looked for every excuse to vote against the bill she co-leads.
“Republicans have an obsession with power and control over women,” Hirono added. “Remember the days when women couldn’t vote, when they couldn’t own property, when they couldn’t open a bank account? The Republicans want to get back to those days when power and control didn’t go to women but to them.”
Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, told me that the anti-abortion movement has been after birth control for decades.
“It’s why we’ve had these fights about Title X, the nation’s family planning program,” she said. “It’s why they’ve tried to block contraception over the counter, which we finally have with Opill. It’s why they’ve been putting out disinformation about control being abortion. So we’ve known what was next. But not we have all the evidence and we’ve got to hold them accountable.”
Ahead of the vote, House Democrats introduced a discharge petition for its own version of the RTCA, which, with at least 218 signatures, would force a floor vote.
The petition, led by Rep. Kathy Manning (D-N.C.), the top sponsor of the bill, has 163 signatures at press time, including the top four House Democrats: Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Minority Whip Katherine Clark (Mass.), Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (Calif.) and Caucus Vice Chair Ted Lieu (Calif.). House Democrats voted unanimously to pass the RTCA last Congress when they controlled the chamber. 195 House Republicans voted against it. The current version of the legislation has more than 200 cosponsors.
“Time and again, extremist Republicans continue to show us who they are. They are waging a war on reproductive health care and attacks on birth control are just the next step in their plot to control women’s bodies,” she said on Tuesday afternoon. “I will not stand idly by and watch extreme politicians interfere with women’s private health care choices.”
House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) said the vote gave Republicans a simple choice.
“They can put aside their MAGA ideology, join us, join the American people and get this bill passed,” she told reporters on Tuesday. “Or they can triple down on their anti-freedom extremism in full view of the American people. The country is watching and their constituents will remember where they stood.”
The White House endorsed the bill yesterday morning and characterized GOP opposition to birth control as “an affront to women’s dignity and their ability to make their own decisions about their lives.” And with the first debate between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump in three weeks, the Biden campaign told reporters it would sound the alarm on the former president’s anti-abortion record.
“Trump has tried to hide behind double talk and lies,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez told reporters yesterday morning. “But at the debate, and in all the weeks leading up to it, President Biden and our campaign are going to call him out.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) began the process for the Senate to consider the bill before the Memorial Day recess.
He announced the date of the vote in a letter to senators on Sunday and filed the motion the next day to set up yesterday afternoon’s vote.
“The scourge of the Republican’s anti-reproductive rights agenda extends to contraception as well,” Schumer wrote in his letter. “We’ve seen right-wing judges, justices and extremist Republicans calling on the Supreme Court to reconsider the constitutional right to contraception and states are trying to ban access to some or all contraceptives by restricting public funds for these products and services.”
The Senate GOP’s two abortion-rights members—Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)—voted in support of the procedural motion. Collins was told reporters on Monday that she would likely support the measure while describing it as “clearly a messaging bill and not a serious attempt at legislating.” However, she said she wanted the opportunity for senators to consider amendments and also expressed concerns about religious liberty protections.
And Joni Ernst, the highest-ranking Senate Republican woman, introduced a rival bill this week that she said would increase the availability of birth control options on the market, expand access to over-the-counter contraception and prevent funding for abortion care.
Conservative opponents of the RTCA say the bill is a solution in search of a problem though because access to birth control isn’t under attack.
But as I reported in 2022, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested in his concurring opinion in the Dobbs decision that the Supreme Court apply the same logic Justice Samuel Alito did to overturn rulings that protect access to contraception, private intimate contact between consenting adults and same-sex marriage.Democrats and reproductive justice advocates argue that the right contraception and fertility treatments should receive the same enhanced federal protections same-sex marriage did when Congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022.
“Two years ago, we got the Dobbs decision. Before that, I can’t tell you how many people told us we were being hysterical for saying that they were going to overturn Roe v. Wade,” Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) said on Tuesday. “Well, let me tell you right now: We are not being hysterical. And we are not jumping to conclusions. We are being practical to protect our health care, our financial security and our independence.”
Still, Schumer knew he lacked the votes to advance the RTCA, just as he did when an effort to start debate on a stand-alone version of a bipartisan border security bill flopped late last month.
“This is not a show vote,” he said yesterday morning. “This is a show-us-who-you-are vote.”
No matter what Schumer wants to call them, what’s clear is that afternoon’s knock-back is unlikely to dissuade Schumer from bringing up similar votes to squeeze Republicans into tough positions on hot-button issues and help his vulnerable incumbents solidify their records against their MAGA challengers.
He said on Tuesday that he will place a bill sponsored by Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) that would enact federal protections for in vitro fertilization on the Senate calendar as part of a legislative campaign to protect the right to abortion care and fertility treatments.
“Millions of Americans have relied on IVF to have children. But after a stunningly radical decision by the Alabama Supreme Court jeopardized access to IVF, families are rightfully worried that this option could be stripped away,” he added. “So, Democrats will act to safeguard and strengthen IVY access for all Americans, so that everyone has a chance to start a family.”
