A GOP talking point suggests birth control is not at risk. Evidence suggests otherwise.

A GOP talking point suggests birth control is not at risk. Evidence suggests otherwise.

Anti-abortion Republicans have new talking points - birth control will remain readily available following the Supreme Court's decision striking down the federal right to abortion, and when Democrats say otherwise, they are just trying to scare voters.

Variations on this claim have been made by a number of Republicans on the House floor July 21st during debate on a bill that would add a right to contraception to federal law. Democrats advanced the bill to ensure the availability of birth control before some abortion opponents have a chance to see whether the Supreme Court will overturn that right too.

“This bill is completely unnecessary,” said Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.), ret Co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus. "In no way, shape or form is access to contraceptives restricted or threatened with being restricted. The liberal majority is clearly trying to once again stoke fear and mislead the American people because, in their opinion, stoking fear is clearly the only way they can win."

We reached out to Cammack's office to inquire about the basis for this statement but did not receive a response.

Similar demands were made in the Senate when it refused to pass the House bill on July 27. “This idea that we should spend limited time here in Congress affirming pre-existing rights is clearly a political narrative designed to divert the attention of the American people from things that are truly at risk,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

But a review of documents and current efforts in some states to change laws shows that there is significant evidence that birth control — or at least some forms of it — may be legally vulnerable. So we dug in.

At the Supreme Court

The foundation for this concern can be found in the concurring opinion of Justice Clarence Thomas in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the case that upheld the guarantee of Roe v. Wade repealed abortion access. Thomas suggested that, having found no constitutional right to abortion, the Court should next "reconsider all of this Court's substantive precedents, including Griswold." This is a reference to Griswold v. Connecticut the 1965 case that established a right for married couples to use contraceptives (individuals were denied this right in a separate case 1972). In Griswold , the Court found that the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment protects the right to privacy.

While Thomas represents only one voice on the court, the number of his colleagues who share his opinion that the birth control case should be reversed is unclear. But the Supreme Court has already allowed some employers to refuse to offer contraceptive coverage to their employees because they oppose abortion. 2014 for debate Hobby Lobby The case centered on the craft store chain's owners' religious belief that some forms of contraception - including the morning-after pill and two types of intrauterine devices - could cause premature abortions by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg. The court ruled that the government could not impose the Affordable Care Act's contraception requirement on employers with these beliefs.

Scientific evidence suggests that neither the Morning after pill (this is a higher dose of a hormone used in regular birth control pills) still spirals stop the implantation of a fertilized egg and therefore do not cause abortions. Still, the court ruled that the owners' religious beliefs trumped the government's interest in providing workers with contraception.

“This legal blurring of clear scientific boundaries between abortion and birth control threatens access to contraceptives in the United States,” wrote professors Rachel VanSickle-Ward and Kevin Wallsten in the Washington Post. They predicted that some states “will likely ban some forms of contraception entirely, using the discredited idea that contraceptives act as abortifacients.”

State action

Confusion over how some forms of contraception work has led to efforts in several states to ban certain types of contraception. The most commonly sought form of contraception is the morning-after pill, which can prevent pregnancy if taken within a few days of unprotected sex, but cannot interrupt an existing pregnancy. It is not the same as the abortion pill, a course of two other drugs that terminate a pregnancy up to the 10th week of pregnancy.

And even if the contraceptive methods prevented a fertilized egg from implanting in a woman's uterus, that wouldn't be an abortion, at least not according to the medical community. Although many religious groups and abortion opponents argue that human life begins with the fertilization of the egg, the consensus among doctors, scientists and legal experts is that pregnancy begins with implantation. And they point out that an abortion is the termination of a pregnancy. About half of all fertilized eggs never implant.

Even before Roe was overturned, Idaho Legislature called for hearings to ban emergency contraception, and Missouri lawmakers tried to block Medicaid from paying for the morning-after pill and IUDs.

Anti-abortion groups are pushing the idea. “Plan B is capable of causing early abortion,” he said a fact sheet by Students for Life of America and refers to the name of a brand of the morning after pill. Model legislation from the National Committee for the Right to Life would ban abortion from the moment of fertilization, not implantation.

The bottom line, Professors VanSickle-Ward and Wallsten wrote before the decision overturning Roe was even final, is that “the court need not formally end legal protections for contraceptive use.”

“If plaintiffs are allowed to call contraception abortion and Dobbs ends legal protections for abortion, then contraception is at risk.”

Our verdict

To date, no state has banned contraceptives. But the threat seems very real. And the absolute nature of Cammack's statement — that there is "no way, shape, or form" that access to contraception is at risk — is not correct. We rate the statement as False.

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