The Anti–Birth Control Movement Is the New Anti-Abortion Movement

Republicans have started to blur the lines between birth control and abortion in the hopes of making it harder for American women to get both birth control and abortions. And nowhere is this clearer than in the Missouri statehouse, where lawmakers debated whether they needed to restrict Medicaid coverage of birth control and limit payments to Planned Parenthood. Yes, as the Kansas City Star reported, lawmakers there spent hours last week in a discussion that “resembled a remedial sex-education course.” It was a tricky play, attacking birth control as a way to attack abortion, and it didn’t work…this time.

“What’s been happening in Missouri last week should serve as a warning sign for what’s to come,” says Alexis McGill Johnson, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “We’re already hearing members of the U.S. Congress spread the same falsehoods we’ve seen in Missouri, conflating medications that prevent pregnancy—birth control and emergency contraception—with medications that end pregnancy.” McGill makes a valuable point—that what happened in Missouri is not isolated, and in many ways it’s part of a Republican playbook for the future. Just ask women in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi, where abortion access is so limited that women have to drive hundreds of miles to end a pregnancy. We’re already two Americas, and the conservative Supreme Court hasn’t even had a chance to get their hands on abortion. That will take place in October when they hear the Mississippi abortion case [Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organziation] (https://www.supremecourt.gov/qp/19-01392qp.pdf), which will determine the constitutionality of pre-viability prohibitions.

The war on choice rages on, but the alarming development is that it seems to be more and more focused on birth control. This is particularly disturbing because most of us feel that the legitimacy of birth control relies on solid settled precedent. But ever since Obamacare was passed, Republicans cottoned on to the fact that if they can tie birth control to abortion, then publicly funded insurance might not have to pay for birth control. Because of the Hyde Amendment, federally funded health care providers cannot, except in rare circumstances, offer coverage for abortion. So if birth control equals abortion…

As outlandish as this equating seems, you can already see its consequences playing out. Just look to QAnon congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who doesn’t think that Plan B—the safe and effective early-contraception pill that prevents women from becoming pregnant within 72 hours of having intercourse—should be covered for veterans by the Department of Veteran Affairs. Yes, Greene told Congress on Thursday that, “contraception stops a woman from becoming pregnant. The Plan B pill kills a baby in the womb once a woman is already pregnant.” This isn’t true. Plan B stops a woman from ovulating and thus prevents her from getting pregnant. A generous interpretation of this nonsense is that Greene has confused Plan B with the abortion pills misoprostol and mifepristone. But there’s also a possibility that this is part of an organized assault on birth control from the Republican Party of Gilead. More and more we see these coordinated attacks coming from both elected Republicans and their messaging arm, Fox News.

“Anti–birth control sentiment has been building for over a decade,” says Robin Marty, the author of The New Handbook for Post-Roe America. “The groundwork was laid in 2010, when the Tea Party fought Obamacare by saying IUDs, Plan B, and contraception itself were, as they called it, the biggest expansion of abortion in the nation.”

Marty continued, explaining the groundwork Trump laid. “The reason this is no longer undercover is because of the Supreme Court decision in Hobby Lobby.” The Hobby Lobby verdict allowed employers to refuse to pay for birth control coverage for their employees due to religious reasons. The Trump administration, Marty says, “set the groundwork for the idea that doctors or pharmacists can decline to treat people because of religious beliefs. And now we have a Supreme Court that will rubber-stamp both those decisions.” The irony is that thrice-married adulterer Donald J. Trump, the man who used to be pro-choice, created this atmosphere.

“The moment abortion advocates have always warned about is here,” says Renee Bracey Sherman, executive director of We Testify, an organization dedicated to the leadership and representation of people who have abortions. “It’s always been here. Politicians who are anti-abortion are also anti–birth control and anti-queer and anti-Black because at the end of the day, they only support a way of life in which they—wealthy white people—are in charge and they are the sole dictators of when, how, and with whom we have sex, procreate, and build our families. It’s about maintaining white patriarchal power and control. It always has been. And anything that allows people to determine their own futures—such as birth control and abortion—is a threat to that.”

Look, Republicans are smart(ish), so they’re not going to take away your birth control pills, they’re just going to continue to blur the line between abortion and birth control. And do you know why that is? Because abortion was never about life for these Republicans. These were the people who argued that your grandmother should be willing to die for the Dow Jones Industrial Average when it came to COVID lockdowns. These are the people who believe in the death penalty. No, this isn’t about life, this is about power. Republicans want to blur the line between birth control and abortion because they want the power to control what happens to women’s bodies.

Originally Appeared on Vogue