1 of 2 | U.S. Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., planned Wednesday to hold a vote on the Right To Contraception Act that Republicans were expected to block. Schumer said tens of millions of women have been robbed of reproductive freedoms and now worry about basic birth control rights. File Photo by Jemal Countess/UPI | License Photo
The Senate was expected Wednesday to vote on the Right To Contraception Act, an effort to highlight the contrast between Democrats and Republicans on national women’s reproductive health rights.
The bill would “protect a person’s ability to access contraceptives and to engage in contraception, and to protect a health care provider’s ability to provide contraceptives, contraception, and information related to contraception.” Advertisement
Republicans were expected to prevent the bill’s advancement, blocking the effort to enact national contraception rights legislation.
In a statement, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said, “It’s a huge overreach. It doesn’t make any exceptions for conscience. … It’s a phony vote because contraception, to my knowledge, is not illegal. It’s not unavailable.”
The bill was first introduced after the Supreme Court struck down the federal right to choose abortions, a decision made possible by three justices appointed by now-convicted felon and former president Donald Trump and fellow Republicans.
“Today, we live in a country where not only tens of millions of women have been robbed of their reproductive freedoms,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor. “We also live in a country where tens of millions more worry about something as basic as birth control.That’s utterly medieval.” Advertisement
To advance the bill guaranteeing federal contraception rights nationwide, Democrats need Republicans for procedural votes.
It’s part of a larger push on reproductive rights by Democrats in Congress that includes in vitro fertilization.
Senate GOP whip John Thune of South Dakota said Republicans will advance their own versions of IVF and contraception bills, claiming that would show Republicans are for contraception.
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said at a news conference this push by Democrats is an effort to have Republicans declare with their votes whether they support legal protections for reproductive rights.
Markey said, “This vote poses one simple question: Do you believe Americans’ access to birth control should be protected?”
On Tuesday, nearly two years after the Dobbs decision overturned abortion rights under Roe vs. Wade, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee held a reproductive rights hearing to examine how state abortion bans are creating “a healthcare nightmare across America.”
Committee Chair Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., told committee members, “A forced pregnancy does not have to make headlines to make someone’s life a living hell.”
Murray called the Republican IVF bill a PR tool to “hide their extremism.” Advertisement
She asserted that women’s experiences with the GOP’s record on reproductive rights is too clear for the Republican Party to deny.
