CHICAGO (AP) — Republican lawmakers in U.S. states have rejected Democrats’ efforts to protect or expand access to contraception, an issue that Democrats are raising as a top issue in this year’s elections. along with abortion and other reproductive rights concerns.
Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican Party nominee, thrust the issue into the political spotlight this week when he said in an interview that he was open to supporting restrictions on contraception before changing course and saying he was “ has never advocated and never will” limit access to contraception. He continued in the post on his social media platform, saying, “I do not support a ban on contraception, and neither does the Republican Party.”
But recent moves in governors’ offices and legislatures across the country tell a more complicated story about Republicans’ positions on contraception, amid what reproductive rights advocates warn: a slow erosion of access.
“Contraception is not as simple an issue for the Republican Party as Trump’s statement suggests,” said Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law and a leading scholar of abortion politics. Contraception laws have failed in both Congress and the states. Contraception is more controversial than most people think.”
Trump’s comments this week and the growing intensity of battles over contraceptives at the state level provide an opening for Democrats, who are trying to capitalize on the issue as a powerful driver of fall election turnout — just as abortion has been since the US Supreme Court. The Court annulled a constitutional right to the procedure two years ago.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has said he wants a vote as soon as next month on a bill to protect access to contraception, similar to the bill the U.S. House of Representatives passed in 2022 when the Democrats controlled the chamber. Even if that legislation fails to clear the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster hurdle, it will put Republicans on notice on an issue that personally resonates with a broad swath of the electorate.
Voters have already shown they broadly support abortion rights, even in conservative states like Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio, where they have sided with abortion rights advocates on ballot measures over the past two years. The legislative confusion over access to contraception has been less visible, but that is starting to change as the abortion debate begins to branch out into other areas of reproductive rights.
Earlier this month, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia vetoed bills from the Democratic-controlled Legislature that would have protected the right to contraception. He said he supports the right to do so, but that “we cannot trample on the religious freedoms of Virginians. He also said in his veto message that the measure would have harmed the rights of parents.
A women’s health care bill in Missouri stalled for months over concerns about expanding insurance coverage for contraception after some lawmakers incorrectly confused birth control with medication abortion. In March, Republicans in Arizona unanimously blocked a Democratic effort to protect the right to access contraception, and Republicans in Tennessee blocked a bill that would have made clear that the state’s abortion ban would not affect contraceptive care or fertility treatments .
Indiana has passed a law requiring hospitals to offer women who receive Medicaid coverage long-term, reversible implantable contraceptives after childbirth — but only after removing IUDs from the bill. That move came after objections from Democrats and some health care providers.
Oklahoma’s Republican-controlled Legislature created legislation that many reproductive rights advocates warned could ban emergency contraception and IUDs. And on Tuesday, the same day Trump made his statements to a Pittsburgh television station, Louisiana lawmakers introduced a measure that would make it a crime to possess two abortion-inducing drugs without a prescription, although pregnant women would be exempt.
“If you look at the policies underway in states since the fall of Roe, we see Republicans dismantling reproductive rights, including contraceptives,” said Heather Williams, chair of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.
Dr. Gabriel Bosslet, an associate professor of clinical medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine, expressed concern about some Republican arguments in favor of restricting access to contraceptives. For example, he said some anti-abortion groups have called on lawmakers to treat emergency contraception – such as IUDs – differently from barrier methods such as condoms, incorrectly labeling them as “abortives” and claiming they cause abortion.
Emergency contraception is also called an “abortive drug” in the GOP’s Project 2025 playbook, which is a blueprint for ways to reform the federal government in the event of a Republican presidential victory this year.
“This is part of a slow erosion of access to contraception,” said Bosslet, who testified against the bill in Indiana.
In Wisconsin, Democrats introduced a bill last year aimed at protecting access to contraception, but it never got a hearing in the Republican Party-controlled state Assembly or Senate before the two-year session ended in March. Senate Democrats tried to get the bill out of committee and force a vote in the House in February, but all 22 Republicans in the House voted against it.
Asked Wednesday why the bill never gained support, Republican Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu said his group would rarely let Democrats take such a step regardless of the issue, though he also said he did not know was with the details of the measure. After a reporter read parts of the bill to him, LeMahieu said the legislation seemed unnecessary.
“People can already get birth control,” he said. “I’m not sure why we should pass that bill.”
About half of states have passed legislation this year to create a legal right to contraception, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which supports reproductive rights. The group noted that as of May 1, Virginia was the only state to pass either legislative chamber of these measures, although the Republican governor ultimately vetoed the bill.
Parental involvement in teens’ access to contraception has also become a point of contention since a ruling in April upheld a Texas law requiring teens to get parental consent. Reproductive rights advocates have warned that the ruling could open the door for other states to restrict teens’ access to contraception. Meanwhile, attempts to place emergency contraceptives or “morning after” pill machines on college campuses have also sparked outrage from anti-abortion groups.
While Trump has sent mixed messages on reproductive rights, President Joe Biden has attacked his positions and highlighted their potential consequences. The Biden campaign warned this week that Trump, in light of comments that his campaign later retracted, would support other states taking similar measures to restrict access to contraceptives.
“If Donald Trump returns to office, this terrifying agenda could spread across the country,” Tulane Law School professor Ellie Schilling said on a conference call with reporters.
On that same call, Biden supporters noted that when the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, Justice Clarence Thomas issued a concurring opinion that alarmed reproductive freedom advocates. He suggested the court also reconsider previous opinions banning contraceptives, sodomy and same-sex marriage.
Ziegler, a law professor at UC Davis, said the same legal reasoning behind the decision to overturn Roe could be used against access to contraception. If anti-abortion groups make the false argument that certain contraceptive methods lead to abortion, she said they might use the Comstock Act to try to limit the distribution of contraceptive-related materials. The 19th-century law was revived by anti-abortion groups seeking to prevent the abortion drug mifepristone from being sent through the mail.
“We are seeing borrowing from the anti-abortion playbook and increasing attacks on contraception,” she said.
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Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Associated Press writers Todd Richmond in Madison, Wisconsin, and Isabella Volmert in Indianapolis contributed to this report.
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