Voters want birth-control choices
Poll: Opposition to 2022 bill could put GOP on defense
WASHINGTON — One month after the Supreme Court struck down the right to an abortion, Democrats who then controlled the House pushed through a bill aimed to ensure access to contraception nationwide. All but eight Republicans opposed it.
That vote two years ago, opposing legislation that would protect the right to purchase and use contraception without government restriction, may come back to haunt Republicans in November, as they seek to keep hold of their slim majority at a time when real fears about reproductive rights threaten to drive voters away from them.
The risks they face became glaringly clear last week, after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos should be considered children. In response, a stampede of Republicans in Congress have rushed to voice their support for in vitro fertilization treatment — even though they have supported legislation that could severely curtail or even outlaw aspects of the procedure.
A new national poll conducted by Americans for Contraception and obtained by The New York Times found that most voters across the political spectrum believe their access to birth control is actively at risk, and that 80% of voters said protecting access to contraception is “deeply important” to them. Even among Republican voters, 72% said they have a favorable view of birth control.
When voters were told that 195 House Republicans had voted against the Right
to Contraception Act, 64% of them said they would be less likely to support Republican candidates for Congress. And overall, the issue of protecting access to contraception bolstered voters’ preference for Democrats by 9 points, giving them a 12-point edge over Republicans, up from 3.
The survey found that birth control access was especially motivating to critical groups in the Democratic coalition, including Black voters and young people, who are less enthusiastic about the election.
Pollsters said the shift in overall party preference — known as the generic ballot — was notable, particularly by such a large margin.
“It’s really hard to move a generic ballot because parties are branded,” said Molly Murphy, president of Impact Research, which conducted the poll.
“You can move numbers on named candidates, but people generally think they know the parties. It’s hard to change that perception.”
While the survey, conducted in early February, did not contain questions about IVF, its findings may help explain why so many Republicans have distanced themselves from a voting record that promotes policies that could put such procedures at risk.
Speaker Mike Johnson, for instance, added his voice Friday night to the growing chorus of Republicans claiming to support IVF treatments. But like many of the other House Republicans now saying they back unrestricted IVF, Johnson is a co-sponsor of the Life at Conception Act, which would recognize a fertilized egg as a person with equal protections under the 14th Amendment.
The bill says the term “human being” includes “all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization,” and does not include any exceptions for IVF and fertility treatments. If enacted, it could severely restrict IVF treatments, which typically involve 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.
It is the latest bit of politically rocky terrain that Republicans have had to walk on issues of reproductive health since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which has made real to voters the threat that other rights could be next to go. According to the new poll, 3 out of 5 voters living in states where abortion has been banned or restricted
said they are concerned that contraception is next.
Murphy said Republicans’ reaction to the Alabama ruling indicates that they know they have a political crisis on their hands.
It will be the second national election cycle in which Republicans face a bind of their own making as they try to reconcile their party’s hard-line policies on women’s health — based on a fealty to a conservative religious doctrine — with a vast majority of the country that now views the issue differently.
A majority of voters support the Right to Contraception Act across party, racial and gender lines, according to the poll. About 94% of Democrats support it, and 68% of Republican voters favor it.
But when the proposal came before the House, Republicans balked. Many of them claimed that they supported contraception in practice but considered the bill a gateway to allowing abortion. They argued that the bill’s definition of contraceptives could be interpreted to include pills that induce abortion.
“The Republican Party has so underestimated the way the country has changed,” said Karen Finney, a longtime abortion rights activist. “This is part of the deal they made with very far-right conservatives who are unbending on these issues. There are Republicans who recognize the damage it could do to their base of support if they were to modify in any direction.”
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a prominent anti-abortion group, opposed the Right to Contraception Act and rated lawmakers according to their votes on the bill, downgrading those who supported it and rewarding those opposed.
Finney said Democrats will score their political opponents on it, too, in their own way: “You will see ads in some places questioning whether the Republican Party really is saying ‘abstinence only. That’s not going to win the youth vote.”
In their conclusion, the pollsters delivered some unequivocal advice to Democratic candidates before the November elections that could also serve as a strong note of caution for Republicans who have opposed birth control access.
“Don’t shy away from talking about all forms of contraception, including IUDs and emergency contraception like Plan B,” they wrote. “Contraception is popular, and voters want to be the ones making the decisions on what methods they use. They do not draw distinctions between types of birth control, and neither should we.”