Republicans want you to forget they hate birth control

While the public outcry over abortion access is showing signs of waning in 2024, the Democrats’ sweep of off-year elections, built on that issue, still has plenty of Republicans freaking out. But the GOP’s solution for defusing the abortion issue—pivoting to talk about the party’s support for birth control—could put them in a deeper hole. Republicans’ denials that they want to take away our birth control will remind voters that it is an actual threat, but only because Republicans made it one.

One Senate Republican, J.D. Vance of Ohio, brushes off the recent warning and advice from Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway, lobbyist Susan Hirschmann, and Independent Women’s Voice CEO Heather Higgins to GOP lawmakers on birth control. He told The Daily Beast that there’s really nothing to see here. None of the Republicans he knows are talking about getting rid of that right and he doesn’t think it’s enough of an issue to sway voters.

“I am somewhat skeptical there's, like, some great political victory to be taken out of that issue,” Vance said.

Vance needs to reconsider, and he could start by looking at the 195 House Republicans who voted against codifying this basic right to privacy—access to birth control—in 2022. The excuse offered by some of those Republicans at the time, including supposed moderate Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, was that it was a fake issue ginned up by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi in an election year.

“I don’t know any Republican personally who wants to restrict contraception,” Bacon said. But that vote proved that the vast majority of Republicans wouldn’t even confirm they want to protect contraception access with a simple vote.

Just a few months ago, those GOP lawmakers unanimously elected a new speaker who has amassed a long anti-contraception record, equating birth control with abortion.