The Quickie: Republicans Think They Can Win Back Women With A New Slogan: "We Took Away Your Abortion Rights But We're Letting You Keep Contraception"
For Immediate Release: Jan. 4, 2024
Welcome to “The Quickie” — Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s daily tipsheet on the top health care & reproductive rights stories of the day. You can read “The Quickie'' online here.
In today’s Quickie: Republicans think they can win back women and abortion is still in the courts.
REPUBLICANS THINK THEY CAN WIN BACK WOMEN WITH A NEW SLOGAN: “WE TOOK AWAY YOUR ABORTION RIGHTS BUT WE’RE LETTING YOU KEEP CONTRACEPTION”: Yep, you read that right. As Bess Levin writes for Vanity Fair, Kellyanne Conway thinks that Republicans can win back women in 2024 by making their campaign slogan something like, “Yeah, we took away your reproductive rights, but, hey, we’re letting you keep contraception, and that’s something!”
That really is “something” isn’t it. This is also a big fat lie – and we have the receipts.
Anti-abortion politicians in the House have attacked contraception with the same vigor as they have abortion access. Look no further than the 2024 appropriations process. House Republicans completely eliminated funding for Title X in their Labor HHS appropriations bill. Title X is the only federal program dedicated to providing sexual and reproductive health care services to people with low incomes — this includes birth control.
The people want reproductive freedom. Period. And that includes access to abortion, contraception, and the full suite of sexual and reproductive health care.
As the Vanity Fair article states, the public has delivered a consistent response in election after election since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, “The results were unambiguous: The American people want abortion rights.”
Read more in Vanity Fair here.
ABORTION IS VERY MUCH STILL IN THE COURTS: Even if we believed the Supreme Court when it said it was taking the judiciary out of ruling on abortion (lol), it’s very clear that is not what is happening.
Instead, as Mark Joseph Stern explains, the judiciary is more involved than ever in deciding whether people will literally live or die. The Fifth Circuit’s latest ruling in a case involving emergency stabilizing medical care required by the federal statute EMTALA makes clear this is still very much about controlling people’s bodies.
As Stern writes, “Consider, for a moment, the implications of the 5th Circuit’s decision. The court acknowledged a fact that the anti-abortion movement has strived mightily to conceal: Abortion bans like Texas’ imperil the health of pregnant patients, denying them the medical standards of care that doctors have applied in these tragic scenarios.”
Abortion bans have consequences, and we must look unflinchingly at the devastation courts and anti-abortion politicians have wrought.
Read more from Slate here.