US Senate to vote on bill to recognize legal right to contraception

The US Senate will vote Wednesday on a bill that would recognize a legal right to contraception, weeks after Donald Trump made – and quickly walked back – comments indicating he is willing to restrict access to birth control.

Facing a Senate where bills need 60 votes to advance and a Republican-controlled House, passing the Right to Contraception Act will be a steep, if not impossible, uphill battle for Democrats. By putting the legal right to birth control up for a vote, Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, is effectively daring Republicans to go on the record opposing the right to something that almost all American women use in their lifetime.

“Donald Trump and Maga Republicans will not be able to outrun their anti-abortion records, because the American people know that if given the chance, extremist Republicans will not stop in their campaign to strip away fundamental liberties in this country,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in a Monday letter to his Senate colleagues.

The Wednesday vote is part of an offensive broadside by Democrats to spotlight their work around reproductive rights, a vital issue in the upcoming 2024 elections, nearly two years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade. On Monday, Democrats also unveiled a new, sweeping package of legislation designed to enshrine a federal right to in vitro fertilization as well as make it more affordable.

Trump backtracked on comments in a May interview that he was “looking at” restricting access to contraceptives, claiming on Truth Social that his own words were “a Democrat fabricated lie”. Almost 90% of voters say Americans should have the right to make decisions about contraception and choose their contraceptives without government interference, according to recent polling from the progressive firm Impact Research.

But efforts to codify the legal right to contraception largely stalled in 2024. So far this year, legislators in at least 27 states have introduced more than 50 bills and proposed constitutional amendments to protect the right to contraception, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks and supports reproductive rights. But only one of those states, Virginia, passed that legislation and handed it off to the governor’s mansion. Glenn Youngkin, the Republican governor, vetoed it.

Redefining abortion

Anti-abortion beliefs are responsible for much of the opposition to birth control protections.

“You won’t find a lot of Republicans who say they oppose birth control. You will find Republicans who don’t want right-to-contraception bills,” said Mary Ziegler, a University of California, Davis School of Law professor who studies the legal history of reproduction. “The reasons for that are complicated. But probably the most important is that a lot of Republicans think that common contraceptives are abortifacients.”

The anti-abortion movement has quietly worked to redefine the meaning of “abortifacient”, or drugs that induce abortions, for years. In 2014, the US supreme court permitted Hobby Lobby, a Christian-owned chain of craft stores, to avoid covering their employees’ morning-after pills and intrauterine devices (IUDs) because their religious beliefs deemed them abortifacients – even though scientists disagree. Morning-after pills and IUDs can prevent pregnancy through a variety of mechanisms, but they ultimately can only keep pregnancies from starting, not disrupt existing ones.

Project 2025, a playbook written for a potential second Trump administration by the influential conservative thinktank the Heritage Foundation, recommends that the federal government drop a requirement that insurers cover Ella, an emergency contraceptive pill, which it deems an “abortifacient”. Meanwhile, the prominent anti-abortion group Students for Life lists birth control pills, IUDs and several other forms of hormonal birth control as “abortifacients” on its website.

Ziegler said abortion opponents could even use existing abortion bans to outlaw contraception. After Roe fell, three states – Georgia, Utah and Oklahoma – changed their legal definitions of “abortion” to remove language that protected contraception, according to a draft of a forthcoming paper by Greer Donley, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and law student Caroline Kelly.

“This is no longer a fringe, side issue for a lot of these groups,” Ziegler said of redefining “abortion”. “It’s a central plank of what they’re trying to do.”

Project 2025 also recommends that the federal government require insurers cover “fertility awareness–based” birth control methods. These non-hormonal methods often involve avoiding sex or using condoms on certain days of the month, and tend to be between 75% and 88% effective at preventing pregnancy, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. IUDs are more than 99% effective.

In 2024, legislators in five states introduced bills that specifically sought to restrict minors’ ability to access contraception, such as by mandating that physicians tell minor patients’ parents about their birth control prescriptions. None of these bills advanced far in their state legislatures.

But in one case, litigation has succeeded where legislation has faltered. In March, the US court of appeals for the fifth circuit upheld a ruling that found Texas providers in the federal Title X network, the nation’s largest family planning program, require parental consent before they can dispense birth control to minors. Title X dates back to the 1970 and aims to provide free or subsidized contraception, STD screenings and other family planning services to people regardless of age.

Trump’s first presidency took an axe to family planning funding by writing new rules that forced almost one-third of clinics that received grants under Title X to leave the program. That left more than 1.5 million people without access to Title X-funded care, including its contraception services.

When Joe Biden won the White House, he rolled back Trump’s changes to Title X. But Project 2025 suggests the federal government revive them. Title X, the playbook adds, should be “reframed with a focus on better education around fertility awareness and holistic family planning”, while clinics it funds should stress the “importance of marriage”.

“I do feel like birth control access is being chipped away at, much the same way that Roe was,” said Kelsey Grimes, senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center. “But I think that people – and by people, I mean legislators and the general public to some degree – don’t really believe that birth control is threatened the same way.”