The GOP's Birth Control Strategy
Say it's actually abortion
The House passed legislation today to protect birth control, with 187 Republicans voting against the measure. It’s hard to come away with any other conclusion other than the one feminists have been warning about for years: They’re coming for contraception.
Despite their very tangible and telling votes, the GOP insists that Democrats are just fear-mongering—and that legislation protecting birth control access is completely unnecessary.
Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers told The New York Times, for example, “Democrats again are spreading fear and misinformation to score political points.” And this week, the conservative organization Independent Women’s Voice (IWV) released a poll showing that the majority of Republican voters support access to contraception. CEO Heather Higgins pointed to the numbers as proof that “the claim that the GOP wants to restrict contraception is yet another harmful hoax.” (In keeping with the Republican tradition of saying one thing and doing another, IWV opposed the Right to Contraception Act.)
Republicans know that Americans, even conservatives, support birth control. Ninety-nine percent of women in the country will use birth control at some point in their lives. To come out explicitly against contraception would be incredibly unpopular. So instead they’re being sneaky as fuck.
In order to sound moderate—while taking extreme actions to limit access to birth control—Republicans are focused on doing two things:
Claiming to support contraception while doing everything in their power to ensure that no one can get it.
Classifying certain types of birth control as abortifacients in order to argue they’re not fighting against contraception, but abortion.
The first is easy for them: They don’t need to oppose birth control if they make it impossible to obtain. So instead of saying something wildly unpopular that would turn off voters, Republicans do things like support pharmacists who won’t fill women’s birth control pill prescriptions, or back companies that refuse to carry health insurance covering their employees’ contraception. Give a few soundbites about religious freedom and they’re done.
The second, misidentifying contraception as abortifacients, is a Republican strategy years in the making. Their (false) claim is that anything that prevents the implantation of a fertilized egg is abortion.
Take Hobby Lobby’s 2014 Supreme Court case. In order to deny their employees coverage for contraception, the company argued that IUDs and the morning after-pill actually ended pregnancy. The lawsuit was supported by Republican politicians and ‘mainstream’ anti-abortion groups, like the Susan B. Anthony List and Americans United for Life, who repeated that lie.
.png){kind=link}
Politicians like Ted Cruz have called contraception “abortion-inducing”; the GOP in Missouri tried to prevent Medicaid from covering IUDs because “it’s not birth control”; and Republicans in Colorado tried to end to a program that gave out free IUDs using the same exact reasoning.
They have been laying this groundwork for a very, very long time. So now, when Republicans have to explain why they won’t support common-sense legislation to make birth control more accessible, they can just yell a bunch of bullshit about abortion: When explaining their opposition to the Right to Contraception Act, for example, the SBA List said it was “a ploy to impose abortion on demand.” Rep. McMorris Rodgers called it was a “Trojan Horse for more abortions.” Even Fox News is in on the action, claiming the legislation guarantees access to “abortion drugs.”
Deflect, lie, repeat.
Oh, and remember that poll about how Republican voters overwhelmingly support access to birth control? Well, it wasn’t just about defending conservatives on the issue—but sending them thinly-veiled advice around messaging.
IWV points out that Republican primary voters said they would be “81% less likely to support a lawmaker who tried to restrict access to contraception.” That’s a big scary number for the GOP. So it’s not a coincidence that this is the one bullet point IWV made sure to underline in their release: “In contrast, what does not have support are chemical abortifacients once a pregnancy is underway.”
They repeat the point several times for emphasis: “The GOP base clearly distinguishes between methods that prevent pregnancies and medications that end pregnancies.”
In other words, if you’re going to come out against birth control, make sure you say it’s actually an abortion.
Republicans know their views on birth control are out-of-touch with the vast majority of Americans—and they’re actively strategizing on how to hide that. (IWV’s CEO is an old hat at this particular scam: In a 2015 speech, Higgins bragged that she’s an expert in “taking a conservative message and packaging it in a way that will be acceptable.”)
We are going to see more and more of this kind of framing: Calling birth control ‘abortions’ while swearing up and down that contraception is politically safe. Like everything else Republicans do around women, it will be a lie. And not just any lie, but a carefully planned and tested one.
I remember saying to a white man in 2010: they want to enshrine fetal personhood and outlaw birth control.
With the confidence and privilege of a white man he said that wouldn't happen.
It took a little over a decade to prove that I was correct. The only people who have been downplaying this possibility are the people who won't ever have to worry about pregnancy and bodily autonomy. Women can see the writing on the wall.
I also grew up in an incredibly emotionally and physically abusive household, so the abuse tactics the GOP's been using for the last 5+ years are not unfamiliar to me. When someone shows you who they are, believe them.
I can’t think of another explanation than- conservatives see women as cattle who’s “job” it is to reproduce for the state and continue to expand the labor pool for what are essentially slave wage jobs. It’s no secret that the birth rate is at a low, I think lowest in 40 years. Maybe they should ask themselves why young people don’t want to/ can’t reasonably have children. It would be too logical for them to address the publics concerns of climate change, wage stagnation, cost of living, maternity leave and healthcare . . . Easier for them to just treat women as just one more “natural resource” to mine and exploit.