Senate Republicans have blocked a bill offered by their Democratic colleagues aimed at codifying legal protections for contraception access.
The bill, the Right to Contraception Act, was put to a vote on Wednesday after languishing in committee for months. Conservative lawmakers called the move a political stunt in anticipation of the 2024 general election.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that a vote for the bill should be “simple.”
“If you believe all women deserve to have contraception then you should vote for this bill. That’s all there is to it,” he said ahead of the vote.
The final vote fell along party lines, with 51 senators voting for it and 39 against. The bill needed 60 votes to move forward.
The Bay State’s junior senator and the bill’s sponsor, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, said that his Republican counterparts aren’t being honest on the issue.
“Today, we asked every Senator whether or not they support the right to contraception. Republicans resoundingly said no, while Democrats showed unequivocally that they will fight for Americans’ health, freedom, and equality. Republicans will mislead, and they’ll hide behind excuses. When given the opportunity to protect the right to contraception, they chose instead to pursue the MAGA anti-freedom, anti-choice agenda,” Markey said in a statement.
The senate majority leader concurred.
“Thanks to Donald Trump and the right-wing MAGA Supreme Court, Americans now have to question whether or not they’ll have access to something as basic and widely supported as birth control. We could have eliminated that worry in one fell swoop by passing the Right to Contraception Act, but Senate Republicans showed the American people where they truly stand,” Schumer said in a statement after the vote.
The bill’s failure in the Senate on Wednesday calls into question any chance a similar bill offered in the Republican controlled House might have.
On Tuesday, House Whip Katherine Clark filed a Discharge Petition to bring that bill to the floor and out of committee, but hasn’t found the support from conservative members of Congress she would need to move the bill forward.
