Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Wednesday that the Senate will vote in June on legislation guaranteeing the right of access to contraception. A pack of birth control pills is shown. (Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — U.S. senators will announce next month whether they support Democratic legislation that would guarantee access to contraception — a right currently upheld by two Supreme Court cases, but one singled out by a conservative justice.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, announced Wednesday that the House would vote on the bill in June. He said it would help strengthen women’s reproductive rights at a crucial time. Sixty votes are needed for the bill to pass.
“Now more than ever, contraception is a critical part of protecting women’s reproductive freedoms,” Schumer said.
The decision to hold a procedural vote on the legislation, which has 49 co-sponsors, came just one day later. Donald Trumpthe Republican presumptive nominee for president, said his campaign would release a contraception policy in the coming week.
Trump appeared open to state restrictions on contraception, although he later backtracked in comments on social media.
“We’re looking at that and I’m going to have a policy on that very soon and I think it’s something you’ll find interesting,” Trump said on KDKA in Pittsburgh. “It’s another issue that’s very interesting. But you will find it very clever. I think it’s a smart decision, but we will release it very soon.”
Trump was asked whether he supports “any restrictions on a person’s right to contraception.”
Trump later said that “things really have a lot to do with the states. And some states will have different policies than others.” That comment came after Trump was asked if he would “maybe support some restrictions, like the morning-after pill or something?”
In Congress
The House passed a bill similar to the Senate legislation in July 2022, sponsored by North Carolina Democratic Rep. Kathy Manning. The chamber was controlled by Democrats at the time.
That measure defined contraception as “an action taken to prevent pregnancy, including the use of contraceptives or fertility awareness methods and sterilization procedures.”
Senate Democrats tried to pass their version of the so-called Right to Contraception Act the same month, but Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa blocked the unanimous consent request.
Unanimous consent is the fastest way to pass legislation in the Senate, but it gives any lawmaker the ability to block its passage. There is no recorded vote during that process, but Schumer will hold the procedural vote next month.
If the legislation receives 60 votes, it would move to a simple majority vote.
Democrats tried to implement legal protections for contraception two years ago, following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, which ended the constitutional right to abortion. That right was established in the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade and upheld in the 1992 decision in Casey v. Planned Parenthood.
In a dissent in Dobbs, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the justices “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive precedents” that relied on the same right-to-privacy legal thinking that justices had cited in Roe and Casey.
Thomas specifically mentioned the cases of Griswold v. Connecticut, Obergefell v. Hodges, and Lawrence v. Texas.
Griswold was the 1965 case in which the Supreme Court struck down a Connecticut state law that prevented married couples from using contraception.
The Supreme Court ruled that a “right to privacy can be inferred from several amendments in the Bill of Rights, and this right prevents states from making illegal the use of contraception by married couples.”
These rights were extended to unmarried people in the 1972 decision Eisenstadt v. Baird.
KFF polls published in March show that 45% of adults say they believe access to contraception is “a safe right that is likely to continue.”
Another 21% responded that they believe it is “an endangered right that is likely to be destroyed.” A total of 34% of respondents indicated that they were not sure.
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