Schumer Plans Vote on Contraception Access, Teeing Up a Campaign Issue

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, plans next month to fast-track a Senate vote on a bill to protect access to contraception nationwide, the start of an election-year push to highlight Republicans’ record of opposing reproductive rights that voters view as at risk of being stripped away.

The Right to Contraception Act is expected to be blocked in the closely divided Senate, where most Republicans are against it. But a vote on the bill is a crucial plank of Democrats’ strategy as they seek to protect their majority in the Senate, in part by forcing G.O.P. lawmakers to go on the record with their opposition to policies with broad bipartisan support.

Access to contraception is a constitutional right regarded by many voters as possibly the next to go after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. Recent moves by conservative state houses and governors have added to a sense of urgency about addressing it at the federal level.

In Virginia earlier this month, for example, Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, vetoed legislation to protect access to contraception.

“This is a clarifying political vote that will put every Republican on record as to whether or not they believe in a constitutional right to contraception,” Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts and the lead sponsor of the bill, said in an interview.

Last year, Senate Republicans blocked Mr. Markey’s attempt to bring up and quickly pass the legislation without debate or a vote, arguing that the bill’s definition of contraceptives could be interpreted to include pills that induce abortion. Democrats say the measure would codify a basic right that former President Donald J. Trump and Republicans refuse to protect.

“The truth is that Republicans and Donald Trump’s extremist base don’t want the Right to Contraception Act to pass,” Mr. Markey said Tuesday. “That’s going to be very clear to voters in the fall.”

In vague remarks on Tuesday, Mr. Trump hinted he was considering a policy restricting access to contraception before walking that back.

“We’re looking at that,” Mr. Trump told reporters when asked if he supported any birth control restrictions. “Things really do have a lot to do with the states, and some states are going to have different policies than others.”

He later backtracked, rushing to social media to clean up his comments. He would “never advocate imposing restrictions on birth control,” Mr. Trump posted, adding that he does not support “a ban on birth control.”

Senate Democrats are facing a slog this year to hang on to their slim majority. They are looking to replay a political strategy they used in 2022, after the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to an abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Highlighting reproductive rights and Republicans’ opposition to measures to protect them helped stave off big G.O.P. gains that had been predicted in the midterm elections that year.

Republicans remain stuck in a bind on the issue. Many have struggled to reconcile their party’s hard-line policies on women’s health measures, based on a conservative religious doctrine that opposes interfering with a pregnancy at any point, with a vast and growing majority of the country that now views the issue differently.

“Contraception is a critical piece of protecting women’s reproductive freedoms, standing as nothing short of a vital lifeline for millions of American women across the country,” Mr. Schumer said in a statement. “Senate Democrats are committed to restoring women’s freedoms and will fight to protect access to contraception and other reproductive freedoms that are essential safeguards for millions of women to control their own lives, futures and bodies.”

Republicans have been trying to gird against the backlash by introducing legislation that purports to ensure access to reproductive services, but often does not provide concrete protections.

Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Katie Britt of Alabama, both Republicans, this week introduced a bill that claims to protect in vitro fertilization by making states ineligible to receive Medicaid funding if they ban access to I.V.F. But Democrats said the legislation falls short because it explicitly does not bar states from making their own policies on I.V.F. treatments, which could restrict access.

Many Republicans in Congress have supported strict anti-abortion legislation that defines life as beginning at the moment of fertilization. That could severely curtail or even outlaw aspects of I.V.F. treatment, which typically involves the creation of several embryos, only one of which is implanted while the others are frozen to allow for subsequent attempts at a successful implantation.

“This is a blatant and hypocritical attempt for two staunchly anti-abortion Republicans to try to save face with voters,” said Mini Timmaraju, the president of Reproductive Freedom for All. “Senate Republicans not only support policies that threaten I.V.F. and birth control, they also enabled Trump to appoint conservatives to the Supreme Court who overturned Roe v. Wade and emboldened extremist judges to attack fertility treatments.”

Republicans earlier this year blocked a bill brought forward by Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, to protect I.V.F. In an interview, Ms. Duckworth dismissed the new Republican bill on the issue as a “fig leaf” that “opens the door for states that want to rip away health care for low-income women to do that.”

“The states most likely to ban I.V.F. are those that refuse to expand Medicaid,” she added.

On the issue of birth control, Ms. Duckworth said the worries over legal access were already having effects at clinics in Southern Illinois, with an influx of patients traveling to the state to receive implanted birth control. The lawmaker said women were coming to clinics and saying, “‘Can you take it out and give me a fresh five-year?’”

“They’re saying, ‘My doctor in Texas is too afraid to give it to me,’” Ms. Duckworth said. “In places like Alabama, doctors are reluctant to insert IUDs.”

In 2022, when Democrats controlled the House, they pushed through the identical contraception bill that the Senate is set to consider the first week of June. In the House, all but eight Republicans opposed it, helping Democrats draw a sharp distinction with the G.O.P. on a social issue voters care deeply about.

When Mr. Markey has tried to push ahead with his bill in the past, Republicans argued it would funnel money to Planned Parenthood and other abortion-related providers and blocked it.

Mr. Markey predicted that such arguments would ring hollow with voters after Republicans vote “no.”

“They can try to rationalize a vote, but that will not be how it is interpreted by women who want a right to contraception,” he said. “If the bill doesn’t pass into law, it will be because Republicans oppose protecting American’s right to contraception.”

A recent national poll conducted by Americans for Contraception found that most voters across the political spectrum believe their access to birth control is actively at risk. Even among Republican voters, 72 percent said they had a favorable view of birth control.

A majority of voters support the Right to Contraception Act across party, racial and gender lines, according to the poll. About 94 percent of Democrats support it, along with 68 percent of Republican voters.

Mr. Schumer is hoping to begin a reproductive rights push to coincide with the June 7 anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut, the landmark 1965 Supreme Court case that struck down state restrictions on contraception, saying they violated a right to privacy.

“The Dobbs decision and a vote on contraception is going to be a big part of the Democrats’ ability to hold onto the Senate,” Mr. Markey predicted.