Health advocates have been raising concerns over access to birth control since well before the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Polling consistently shows broad bipartisan support for birth control, and most Republicans argue the people opposed to it are in a small minority.
But while the ruling last summer gave a jolt of energy to the reproductive rights movement, it also has made it harder to separate the issue of contraception from the politics of abortion.
In a direct response to the Dobbs decision last year, the then-Democratic-majority House passed legislation to codify access to contraceptives on the federal level. Only eight Republicans joined every Democrat to pass the bill.
A companion measure was blocked in the evenly divided Senate.
Last week, Senate Democrats tried to force consideration of the bill again as part of their efforts to bring attention to post-Roe America and force Republicans to object on the record to broadly popular legislation.
Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) objected to the unanimous consent request, saying the bill was using intentionally vague language because it was really about abortion.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks reproductive health measures, even some GOP-led states have passed measures to expand access to birth control.
Still, advocacy groups say they are not taking chances, pointing to Justice Clarence Thomas writing that the Supreme Court should reconsider Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 decision that established a right to use contraception.
And while the major anti-abortion groups say they are neutral on birth control, they also say that life begins at conception and argue that anything preventing a fertilized egg from implanting in a woman’s uterus is an “abortifacient.”
For example, Students for Life lists common contraceptives such as IUDs, Plan B and other emergency contraception, birth control pills, hormonal patches, implants and shots as abortifacients.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said an IUD doesn’t prevent implantation; it prevents the initial fertilization, and birth control pills prevent ovulation. Last year, the Food and Drug Administration updated the labeling attached to emergency contraceptive pills to clarify that they are not abortion drugs.
