With almost every House Republican voting against it, the House of Representatives passed a bill to protect the right to access contraception.
All 220 Democrats were joined by eight Republicans in voting for the Right to Contraception Act earlier today, sponsored by Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC). If passed, the bill would establish a federal right for people to obtain and use contraceptives that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Two Republicans voted present.
Democrats said the bill was necessary because the Supreme Court has shown that it is willing to overturn the right to contraception since it overturned the federal right to an abortion with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas said that the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut decision – along with Lawrence v. Texas (which overturned bans on gay sex) and Obergefell v. Texas (which legalized marriage equality in all 50 states) – should be reconsidered since they’re based on the same idea of substantive due process as Roe v. Wade was.
Americans are facing “a perilous time, where an extremist Supreme Court and the GOP are rolling back our rights,” said Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL).
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“I ask those who oppose contraception, again: Do you even know what’s going on in your own families? Why don’t you ask?” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said in her floor speech in support of the bill. “Do we need a session of the birds and the bees to talk about why this is important?”
“What’s going on here? Is the blind desire to have women controlled and in servitude such that they don’t even want to know the truth about family planning and contraception?”
Pelosi: Do we need a session on the birds and the bees to talk about why this is important? pic.twitter.com/NyPumIlXVp
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 21, 2022
Before Griswold, many states banned contraception and some even banned medical information about contraception. Almost every state had a law regulating the use of contraception. The federal government banned sending contraceptives by mail under the Comstock Act, as well as information about contraception because it was considered obscene.
Griswold gave married couples the right to use contraception in 1965, and the right was expanded to everyone in a 1972 Supreme Court decision. The language about contraception was removed from the Comstock Act in the 1970s.
“If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child,” Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. wrote at the time.
Since condoms are also a method of contraception, Griswold protected the right to access one of the best tools for preventing the transmission of many sexually transmitted infections as well.
Earlier this week, the House passed a bill to codify the right of two consenting adults of any gender or race to get married. The majority of Republicans – 157 – voted against that law, with many saying that it’s an attack on the Supreme Court and others saying that they’re against marriage equality.
“I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman and that’s how God created it,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said before the vote.
Some Republicans similarly said that the contraception bill isn’t necessary because they don’t believe the Supreme Court is going to overturn Griswold.
“Democrats are spreading fear and misinformation to score political points,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), who said that contraception rights are “a Trojan horse for more abortions.” She told the Washington Examiner that she believes that some of the contraceptives approved by the FDA could be used to perform abortions.
Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) said that the contraception bill was part of the Democrats’ “extreme abortion-on-demand agenda.”
But Democrats said that now is the time to protect the right to use contraception, even if the Supreme Court isn’t currently hearing a case that they could use to overturn Griswold.
“While the right to contraception is legal today, we must act to ensure this remains true in the future,” said Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ). “This legislation does exactly that, by enshrining the right to contraception in federal law.”
