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birth control
Senate Republicans Block Yet Another Reproductive Rights Bill
"The American people want to know where their senators stand on freedom of choice," said Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Jul 10, 2024
In another display of GOP lawmakers' opposition to reproductive rights, U.S. Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked the Reproductive Freedom for Women Act.
Introduced last month by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the bill states that "the protections enshrined in Roe v. Wade... should be restored and built upon, moving towards a future where there is reproductive freedom for all."
The bill also acknowledges Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court's June 2022 ruling that reversedRoe, the decision that had affirmed the right to abortion until viability since 1973. Dobbs set off a fresh wave of efforts to impose devastating new restrictions on reproductive healthcare.
"If Republicans are going to force women to stay pregnant, we are going to force them to be honest with the American people about their extreme position. And, by the way, Democrats are going to keep fighting to restore the rights the American people have been so clear that they want back," Murray said on the Senate floor before Wednesday's vote.
The vote was 49-44, mostly along party lines. Seven senators were not present, and Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) were the only Republicans who supported holding a final vote on the legislation. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) changed his vote to "no" so he can bring the bill back up at a later date.
Wednesday's vote followed Republicans blocking bills on in vitro fertilization (IVF) and contraception last month. It also came after the GOP blocked three bills on Tuesday, which aimed to affirm the freedom to cross state lines for abortion care, protect doctors providing legal abortions from being punished for treating patients from other states, and support training for more providers.
"We know where the American people stand on the freedom of choice: Over 80% of Americans—including two-thirds of Republicans—agree that healthcare decisions including abortion should be between a woman and her doctor," Schumer said on the Senate floor Wednesday.
"But Americans are rightfully worried that reproductive rights are becoming extinct in this country. They see what's happening at the Supreme Court. They see the attacks on women's rights in states like Texas and Florida and Alabama and Idaho and beyond," he continued. "The American people want to know where their senators stand on freedom of choice."
The Senate majority leader also called out former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee to face embattled Democratic President Joe Biden in November.
While Trump's recognition that rolling back reproductive freedom is unpopular is reportedly what led to changes in the Republican Party's 2024 policy platform, campaigners and legal experts have warned this week that the final language is still incredibly threatening and the GOP can't be trusted on this issue.
The White House said Tuesday that "the administration strongly supports Senate passage" of the bill and "will continue to work with Congress to defend reproductive freedom once and for all."
The statement also called out the GOP, saying that "Republican elected officials' extreme agenda is putting women's health and lives at risk and unleashing chaos and cruelty across America."
After the vote Wednesday, Reproductive Freedom for All president and CEO Mini Timmaraju said in a statement that "we're grateful to Sen. Murray, Leader Schumer, and our champions in the Senate for continuing to hold Republicans' feet to the fire for the damage they've done to reproductive freedom."
She added that "the GOP must be held accountable for the abortion bans they've helped orchestrate and refuse to back down from—and this November, they will be voted out of office."
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Planned Parenthood Warns House GOP Appropriations Bills Attack Global Health
The "slate of dangerous and unpopular provisions" includes "eliminating the Title X family planning program and reinstating the Trump-era expanded global gag rule."
Jul 01, 2024
As the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives uses the appropriations process to promote the GOP agenda ahead of the November elections, Planned Parenthood Action Fund on Monday highlighted how the spending bills attack health within and beyond the United States.
"Once again, anti-abortion rights politicians in Congress are manipulating the federal appropriations process to push for a recycled slate of dangerous and unpopular provisions to block access to sexual and reproductive healthcare across the country and around the world," states the new Planned Parenthood Action Fund memo.
The document details anti-health policies in spending legislation for fiscal year 2025 that House Republicans have advanced recently, which include provisions "eliminating the Title X family planning program and reinstating the Trump-era expanded global gag rule."
The global gag rule bars U.S. government funding for foreign groups that provide information, referrals, or services for abortion care, or advocate for decriminalization or increasing access. It was initially implemented by former Republican President Ronald Reagan as the Mexico City policy, then reinstated and expanded by former President Donald Trump.
"In all, anti-abortion rights politicians continue to act in defiance of the vast majority of their constituents who believe that the government has no right to control people's personal healthcare decisions with attacks on abortion, birth control, and gender-affirming care."
Despite Trump's ongoing legal battles, he is the presumptive Republican nominee to face Democratic President Joe Biden in November. Biden rescinded his predecessor's gag rule shortly after taking office in 2021. Reproductive freedom has been a key issue in not only that contest but races at all levels of U.S. politics this cycle, as GOP policymakers and candidates have set their sights on abortion care, birth control, and in vitro fertilization.
The gag rule was included in the appropriations bill for the Department of State, foreign operations, and related programs, which the House on Friday passed 212-200. The only Democrat who voted in favor was Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington—who supports reproductive rights and has shared her own abortion story.
That bill would also "cap funding for international family planning and reproductive health programs at $461 million, a nearly 25% cut," and end funding for United Nations entities including the U.N. Population Fund, as the Planned Parenthood memo notes. It would also "restrict information about and access to gender-affirming care," and "maintain the Helms Amendment in addition to restrictions on abortion coverage for Peace Corps volunteers."
Speaking out against the legislation last week, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, said that "much like last year, the fiscal year 2025 state and foreign operations bill resurrects the doomed isolationism of the early 20th century."
"For the sake of our national security, women's health globally, and our response to the climate crisis, Republicans must abandon this reckless and partisan path and join Democrats at the table to govern," declared DeLauro, who raised the alarm about House GOP appropriations proposals throughout June.
Taking aim at the labor, health and human services, and education legislation last week, she said that "in keeping with the majority's other partisan bills, this bill is chock full of dozens of poison pill riders, including multiple provisions that attack women's freedom and block abortion and reproductive healthcare services."
Specifically, as the new memo points out, it would interfere with postgraduate training in abortion care, impose the Hyde and Weldon amendments, restrict access to gender-affirming care, block Biden administration executive orders intended to boost abortion care access in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, and eliminate funding for Title X family planning and teen pregnancy prevention programs while pouring money into abstinence-only-until-marriage initiatives.
It would also "defund" Planned Parenthood, preventing people in communities across the United States—particularly in rural and medically underserved areas—from accessing services including sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, cancer screenings, and birth control, as the memo outlines.
The recently introduced commerce, justice, and science bill would block most federal prisoners from attaining abortion coverage and prevent the U.S. Department of Justice from suing state or local governments over anti-choice laws, according to the memo. The financial services and general government legislation would reverse a District of Columbia law protecting workers from being fired for their reproductive healthcare choices, bar D.C. from using local funds to cover abortion care, and ban Federal Employee Health Benefits Program coverage of most abortions.
"In all, anti-abortion rights politicians continue to act in defiance of the vast majority of their constituents who believe that the government has no right to control people's personal healthcare decisions with attacks on abortion, birth control, and gender-affirming care," the publication states.
The document also targets provisions in multiple recently passed spending bills focused on homeland security, the Pentagon, and veterans—including attacks on abortion and gender-affirming care for current and former service members and their families as well as anyone in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.
"Anti-abortion rights lawmakers recently included similar measures in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)—an annual must-pass bill," the memo highlights.
"Everyone deserves access to abortion and gender-affirming care, including service members and their families. But these lawmakers would rather play games with our fundamental rights in their attempt to control our bodies, lives, and futures."
After the mid-June NDAA vote, Planned Parenthood Action Fund president Alexis McGill Johnson said that "it's like Groundhog Day. Anti-abortion rights House members use must-pass bills as a vehicle to force through their deeply unpopular and dangerous agenda—again and again and again. Everyone deserves access to abortion and gender-affirming care, including service members and their families. But these lawmakers would rather play games with our fundamental rights in their attempt to control our bodies, lives, and futures."
The NDAA and spending bills aren't expected to pass the Senate—which is narrowly controlled by Democrats—in their current forms, but they send a message about what Republicans would prioritize if they fully reclaimed Congress and the White House.
"The majority's policy riders do not belong in appropriations bills, and like last year, we will defeat them," DeLauro said last month. "But it is disappointing that we are going through this charade again, just months after Republicans and Democrats voted for the 2024 appropriations bills."
This post has been updated to clarify that the memo was exclusively from Planned Parenthood Action Fund, not Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
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Showing 'What's at Stake in November,' Senate GOP Blocks Right to Contraception Act
"Today was not a 'show vote'—this was a show-us-who-you-are vote," said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. "And Senate Republicans showed the American people exactly who they are."
Jun 05, 2024
U.S. Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked consideration of the Right to Contraception Act, a move that Democratic leaders and rights advocates pointed to as further evidence that the GOP is hellbent on further degrading reproductive freedom.
"It's appalling. Shameful. Inexcusable. Grossly out of touch. Today Republicans in the U.S. Senate refused to take the simple step of enshrining our right to contraception into federal law when they voted down the Right to Contraception Act," declared Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, executive director and CEO of MomsRising. "When Senate Republicans turned their backs on it today, they turned their backs on America's moms."
Reproductive Freedom for All president and CEO Mini Timmaraju said that "if you still need more proof that Republicans are coming for birth control, here it is. Their refusal to protect this popular and fundamental right tells us everything we need to know—and voters won't forget it this November."
Reproductive freedom has been a key issue at all levels of U.S. politics leading up to the general election, when voters will determine who controls Congress and the White House. Democratic President Joe Biden, who supports reproductive rights, is running for reelection and is set to face former Republican President Donald Trump.
The Right to Contraception Act was spearheaded by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), and Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.). The bill would "protect an individual's ability to access contraceptives and to engage in contraception and... protect a healthcare provider's ability to provide contraceptives, contraception, and information related to contraception."
Timmaraju thanked the Democratic sponsors and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for trying to advance to a final vote a bill that members of Congress have been fighting for since 2022. She also stressed that "as Republican lawmakers and Donald Trump continue to threaten access to contraception, protecting it is more important than ever."
After the procedural vote on Wednesday, Biden's reelection campaign released a video in which Vice President Kamala Harris notes that Trump—who has bragged about appointing three of the six U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade—signaled on camera last month that his election would threaten access to not only abortion care but also contraceptives.
"If given an opportunity, Donald Trump would sign a national abortion ban," Harris warns in the clip. "A second Trump term would really mean more harm, more pain, and less freedoms. But we're not going to let that happen."
While Republican senators on Wednesday tried to dismiss Democrats' push for a vote on the contraception bill as a political stunt, rights advocates and reporters have highlighted right-wing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' concurring opinion two years ago in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the case that reversedRoe.
"In future cases, we should reconsider all of this court's substantive due process precedents," Thomas wrote, setting his sights on the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut ruling in favor of the liberty to use contraceptives, the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision overturning a state law that criminalized consensual sexual activity between adults of the same sex, and the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges opinion that affirmed same-sex couples can legally marry nationwide.
As Schumer emphasized during a press conference after the vote, since Dobbs, Republican policymakers have created what critics in the chamber call "a healthcare nightmare across America" by ramping legislative attacks on reproductive rights—as was detailed during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Tuesday.
"Today was not a 'show vote'—this was a show-us-who-you-are vote. And Senate Republicans showed the American people exactly who they are. They showed that they're not willing to stand up and protect something that 92% of Americans support," Schumer said Wednesday. "To Senate Republicans who argue federal protections for birth control are unnecessary, go ask the people of Virginia what they think after their Republican governor vetoed a bill that would have protected contraceptives at the state level."
"Go ask the people of Nevada what they think after their Republican governor also vetoed a bill to protect access to birth control," he continued. "And to those who say birth control will never fall at risk, go ask the people of Arizona, or Florida, or Idaho, or Iowa, or Missouri. In each of these states, Republican governors or Republican state legislators are on record blocking protections for birth control access in some form or another."
The majority leader—who changed his vote on the Right to Contraception Act to "no" so he has the option to bring it up for a vote again—is planning a similar push for a bill to protect access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) next week. Several rights leaders have connected the fight for abortion and contraception rights to fertility care, including Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center.
"We are outraged that some senators blocked passage of the Right to Contraception Act, especially at a time when extremists are threatening access to birth control, blocking access to IVF, and criminalizing abortion," she said. "Their refusal to vote to protect our right to birth control goes against the will of the people and it demonstrates that our right to contraception is not safe."
Reproductive Equity Now similarly warned on social media that "it's obvious from today's vote that anti-abortion extremists will not stop at banning abortion. They will attempt to block our access to birth control, attack IVF, eliminate LGBTQ+ healthcare, and decimate our reproductive autonomy. This is what's at stake in November."
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