Republican opposition to contraceptive law could alienate voters, polls show

A month after the Supreme Court struck down the right to abortion, Democrats, who then controlled the House of Representatives, pushed through a bill that would guarantee access to contraception nationwide. All but eight Republicans opposed it.

That vote two years ago, against legislation that would protect the right to buy and use contraception without government restrictions, could come back to haunt Republicans in November as they try to hold on to their slim majority at a time when there is real fear for reproductive rights. threaten to alienate voters.

The risks they face became starkly clear last week, after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos should be considered children. In response, a rush of Republicans in Congress have rushed to voice their support for in vitro fertilization treatment — even as they have supported legislation that could severely restrict or even ban 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 contraception is actively in jeopardy, with 80 percent of voters saying that protecting access to contraception was “profound.” important” to them. Even among Republican voters, 72 percent said they have a positive view of contraception.

When the voters were told 195 Republicans in the House of Representatives voted against the Right to Contraception ActAccording to the poll, 64 percent of them said they would be less likely to support Republican candidates for Congress. And overall, the issue of protecting access to contraception boosted voters’ preference for Democrats by nine points, giving them a 12-point lead over Republicans, up from three.

The survey found that access to birth control was especially motivating for critical groups in the Democratic coalition, including black voters and young people, who are currently less enthusiastic about the elections.

Pollsters said the shift in overall party preference – known as the overall vote – was notable, especially by such a wide margin.

“It’s really difficult to organize a blanket ballot because parties are branded,” said Molly Murphy, president of Impact Research, which conducted the poll. “You can move numbers around on named candidates, but people generally think they know the parties. It is difficult to change that perception.”

Although the survey, conducted in early February, did not include questions about IVF, its findings may help explain why so many Republicans have moved away from voting policies that promote policies that could jeopardize such procedures.

Speaker Mike Johnson, for example, on Friday evening added his voice to the growing chorus of Republicans who say they support in vitro fertilization treatments. But like many of the other Republicans in the House of Representatives who now say they support unlimited IVF, Mr. Johnson is co-sponsoring the Law on life at conceptionthat would recognize a fertilized egg as a person with equal protection under the 14th Amendment.

The bill states that the term ‘human’ includes ‘all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization’ and does not include exceptions for IVF and fertility treatments. If introduced, this could severely limit IVF treatments, which typically involve the creation of multiple embryos, only one of which is implanted, while the others are frozen to allow subsequent attempts at successful implantation.

It’s the latest bit of politically rocky terrain Republicans have had to navigate on reproductive health since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which has made real the threat to voters that other rights will could be next. According to the new poll, three in five voters living in states where abortion is banned or restricted said they are concerned that contraception is the next step.

Ms. Murphy said Republicans’ response to the Alabama ruling indicated they know they have a political crisis on their hands.

“The reason they need to speak out against this is because they know it’s not plausible for voters to believe that it was just an Alabama court case, but more of a representation of what this entire party stands for,” she said. Murphy said. “If they thought this was an outrageous ruling from a rogue court in the South and they didn’t have to say anything, they wouldn’t say anything. This is damage control.”

It will be the second national election cycle in which Republicans face an obstacle of their own making as they try to reconcile their party’s hardline policies on women’s health — based on fidelity to conservative religious doctrine with a large majority of the country. who now views the issue differently.

According to the poll, a majority of voters support the Right to Contraception Act, across party, racial and gender lines. About 94 percent of Democrats support it, and 68 percent of Republican voters favor it.

But when the proposal reached the House of Representatives, Republicans balked. Many of them claimed that they supported contraception in practice, but viewed the bill as a gateway to allowing abortion. They argued that the bill’s definition of contraceptives could be interpreted to include pills that cause 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 intransigent on these issues. There are Republicans who realize the damage it could do to their support if they were to adjust in either direction.”

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a prominent anti-abortion group, opposed the Right to Contraception Act and judged lawmakers based on their votes on the bill, demoting those who supported it and rewarding those who opposed it.

Ms. Finney said Democrats will also target their political opponents in their own way. “You’ll see ads in some places wondering if the Republican Party really says ‘abstinence only,’” Ms. Finney said. “That’s not going to win the youth vote.”

Some vulnerable Republicans have already tried to change course on contraception after opposing the 2022 bill. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Republican of Iowa, led a group of Republican women in the House of Representatives last year in sponsoring the Orally Taken Contraception Act of 2023, a bill they introduced as a way to expand access to contraception .

Democrats dismissed the bill — which was notably unopposed by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America — as so limited that it had virtually no effect other than as an attempt to address House Republicans’ hostility to contraception to mask. The bill, which Mr. Johnson has yet to put to a vote, would direct the Food and Drug Administration to issue guidelines for companies that want to make oral contraceptives available without a prescription.

Only two pharmaceutical companies are actively offering contraception without a prescription. One of them, Opill, had already been approved for sale without a prescription before the introduction of the legislation. The other, from Cadence Health, has been in the FDA application process for years and would not necessarily benefit from or need the guidelines the bill directs the agency to follow.

The new Americans for Contraception poll, conducted between Feb. 2 and Feb. 8, included interviews with 1,800 voters.

In their conclusion, the pollsters offered some unequivocal advice to Democratic candidates ahead of the November election, which could also serve as a warning to Republicans who oppose access to birth control.

“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 to decide which methods to use. They don’t differentiate between forms of contraception, and neither should we.”