A month after the Supreme Court struck down abortion rights, Democrats, who then controlled the House of Representatives, pushed through a bill that would ensure access to contraceptives nationwide. All but eight Republicans opposed it.
The vote two years ago to reject a law that would protect the right to buy and use contraceptives without government restrictions could come back to haunt Republicans in November as they seek to preserve their narrow majority in a Keeping time when there are real fears about reproductive rights threaten to drive voters away from them.
The risks they face became clear last week after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos should be considered children. In response, a swath of Republicans in Congress have expressed support for in vitro fertilization treatment — even as they have supported legislation that could significantly restrict or even ban aspects of the procedure.
A new national poll conducted by Americans for Contraception and reported by The New York Times found that most voters across the political spectrum believe their access to contraception is actively at risk, and that 80 percent of voters said that Protecting access to contraception is “deeply important” to them. Even among Republican voters, 72 percent said they had a positive view of birth control.
When voters were told that 195 Republicans in the House of Representatives had voted against the Right to Contraception Act, 64 percent of them said they would be less likely to support Republican candidates for Congress, according to the poll. And overall, the issue of protecting access to contraception increased voters’ preference for Democrats by nine points, giving them a 12-point lead over Republicans (up from three).
The poll found that access to birth control was particularly motivating for critical groups in the Democratic coalition, including black voters and young people who are currently less enthusiastic about voting.
Pollsters said the shift in overall party preference – known as the “generic ballot” – was notable, especially by such a large difference.
“It’s really hard to pass a universal ballot because parties have a brand,” said Molly Murphy, the president of Impact Research, which conducted the poll. “You can move numbers around named candidates, but people generally think they know the parties. It’s hard to change that perception.”
While the poll, conducted in early February, did not include questions about IVF, its results may explain why so many Republicans have distanced themselves from a voting record that promotes policies that could endanger such procedures.
Speaker Mike Johnson, for example, added his voice Friday evening to the growing chorus of Republicans claiming they support in vitro fertilization treatments. But like many of the other House Republicans now supporting unrestricted IVF, Mr. Johnson is a co-sponsor of the Life at Conception Act, which would recognize a fertilized egg as a person with equal protection under the 14th Amendment.
The bill states that the term “human” includes “all stages of life, including the time of fertilization” and does not provide exceptions for IVF and fertility treatments. If this comes into force, it could significantly limit IVF treatments, which typically involve the creation of multiple embryos, only one of which is implanted while the others are frozen to allow later attempts at successful implantation.
It’s the latest politically difficult terrain Republicans have had to tread on reproductive health issues since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. According to the new poll, three in five voters who live in states where abortion is banned or restricted said they were concerned that contraception would be next in line.
Ms. Murphy said Republicans’ reaction to the Alabama ruling showed they knew they had a political crisis on their hands.
“The reason they have to speak out against it is because they know it’s not plausible for voters to think that it was just an Alabama court, but rather a representation of what this entire party stands for says Ms. Murphy. “If they thought this was a special ruling from a rogue court in the South and they didn’t have to say anything, they wouldn’t say anything. This is damage control.”
It will be the second national election cycle in which Republicans face a self-inflicted quandary as they try to reconcile their party’s tough policies on women’s health – based on allegiance to a conservative religious doctrine – with the vast majority of the country the topic now looks different.
According to the poll, a majority of voters support the right to contraception law across party, racial and gender lines. About 94 percent of Democrats support it and 68 percent of Republican voters favor it.
But when the proposal was introduced in the House of Representatives, Republicans balked. Many of them claimed that they supported contraception in practice, but saw the bill as a gateway to allowing abortions. They argued that the bill’s definition of contraceptives could be interpreted to include pills that cause abortion.
“The Republican Party has so underestimated the way the country has changed,” said Karen Finney, a longtime abortion rights activist. “This is part of the agreement they have made with very far-right conservatives who are adamant on these issues. There are Republicans who recognize the damage it could do to their support base if they changed in any direction.”
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a prominent anti-abortion group, opposed the Right to Contraception Act and ranked lawmakers based on their votes for the bill, demoting those who supported it and rewarding those who supported it rejected.
Ms. Finney said Democrats would also use it to score points on their political opponents in their own way. “In some places you’ll see ads asking whether the Republican Party really says ‘abstinence only,'” Ms. Finney said. “That won’t win the youth vote.”
Some vulnerable Republicans have already tried to change course on contraception after opposing the 2022 bill. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Republican of Iowa, last year led a group of Republican women in the House of Representatives in pushing for the Orally Taken Contraception Act of 2023, a bill they introduced to expand access to contraception.
Democrats rejected the bill—notably opposed by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America—as so narrow that it would have virtually no effect except as an attempt to mask House Republicans’ hostility toward contraception. The bill, which Mr. Johnson has yet to vote on, would direct the Food and Drug Administration to issue guidelines for companies that want to offer oral contraception without a prescription.
Only two pharmaceutical companies are actively working to offer contraceptives without a prescription. One of them, Opill, was already approved for sale without a prescription before the law was introduced. The other, from Cadence Health, has been in the FDA application process for years and would not necessarily benefit from or need the guidance the agency is asked to issue in the bill.
The new Americans for Contraception poll, conducted between February 2 and February 8, included interviews with 1,800 voters.
In their conclusion, the pollsters offered some stark advice to Democratic candidates ahead of November’s election that could also serve as an urgent warning to Republicans who have opposed access to birth control.
“Don’t be afraid to talk about all forms of contraception, including IUDs and emergency contraception like Plan B,” they wrote. “Contraception is popular and voters want to decide for themselves which methods they use. They make no distinction between types of contraception, and neither should we.”
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2024-02-26 10:07:06
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