She had barely opened her city corridor to questions when Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a Republican from a aggressive district in Iowa, was pressed to defend her opposition to abortion rights.
“One of the main functions of the federal government is to protect life,” Ms. Miller-Meeks, who gained election in 2020 by simply six votes, advised a sparse crowd this month in Iowa City, a youthful, extra progressive a part of her district the place she hardly ever campaigns.
Ms. Miller-Meeks then rapidly pivoted to politically safer terrain, telling her constituents about how she had additionally sponsored laws aimed toward increasing entry to contraception.
“The best way to prevent abortion is to prevent pregnancy,” she stated.
It is an more and more frequent technique amongst weak House Republicans — particularly these in politically aggressive districts — who’re attempting to reconcile their get together’s hard-line anti-abortion insurance policies with the views of voters of their districts, notably independents and ladies.
While many of those G.O.P. lawmakers have solid votes within the House this yr to restrict abortion entry — sustaining a stance that some Republicans concede damage their get together in final yr’s midterm elections — Ms. Miller-Meeks and others spent a part of the summer time congressional recess speaking up their help for contraception entry, which is broadly fashionable throughout the nation and throughout get together traces.
Appearing to embrace entry to contraception has grow to be an crucial for Republican candidates in any respect ranges who’re involved that their get together’s opposition to abortion rights has alienated girls, notably after the Supreme Court’s resolution final yr to overturn Roe v. Wade and the acute abortion bans in G.O.P.-led states which have adopted.
“Can’t we all agree contraception should be available,” Nikki Haley, the one Republican girl within the presidential main, stated final week on the first main debate, in search of to blunt assaults from Democrats on the problem of reproductive well being care.
In states the place abortion is now prohibited, 43 p.c of voters say abortion entry needs to be simpler, up from 31 p.c in 2019, in line with a latest Pew Research survey.
Championing entry to contraception in these states is “smart politics and good policy,” stated Nicole McCleskey, a Republican pollster. “Republicans have long said we need to find alternatives to abortion. This is one. There are a lot of Republicans who have longstanding records of promoting contraception. It’s a meaningful effort to engage women voters.”
Just forward of lawmakers’ lengthy summer time break, Ms. Miller-Meeks was a part of a gaggle of House Republican girls who launched the Orally Taken Contraception Act of 2023, a invoice that they pitched as a approach to broaden entry to contraception and that she referred to as “a significant step forward for health care.”
Abortion rights advocates argue that the laws is actually meaningless and merely an effort by Republican lawmakers to mislead voters about their positions on girls’s well being. But for the G.O.P. girls who’re backing it, the invoice provides a chic approach to shift the dialog away from the divisive concern of abortion.
Joining Ms. Miller-Meeks on the laws was Representative Jen Kiggans, Republican of Virginia, a prime goal of Democrats in subsequent yr’s elections. Ms. Kiggans, a nurse practitioner, voted along with her get together in July to connect language to the annual protection coverage invoice that will reverse a Pentagon coverage aimed toward preserving entry to abortion companies for navy personnel no matter the place they’re stationed, and has spent the weeks since emphasizing her advocacy for increasing entry to contraception.
In addition to co-sponsoring the contraception entry invoice, Ms. Kiggans supported an modification to the protection measure by Representative Veronica Escobar, Democrat of Texas, to eradicate co-pays for contraception for navy members and their households.
The contraception invoice launched in July, co-sponsored by at the very least eight Republican girls and endorsed by the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, would direct the Food and Drug Administration to concern steering for corporations that need to make oral contraception obtainable with out prescriptions. But it isn’t clear what sensible impact it will have.
Only two drug corporations are actively working to supply contraception over-the-counter. One of them, Opill, was already permitted on the market with no prescription earlier than the laws was launched. The different, Cadence Health, is years into the applying course of with the F.D.A. and doesn’t want the steering that the invoice directs the company to concern.
Abortion rights teams have dismissed the invoice as a stunt aimed toward masking Republicans’ drive to crack down on each abortion and contraceptive entry.
“The legislation is not a genuine attempt to expand birth control,” stated Karen Stone, the vp of public coverage on the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “They’re posturing to save face with voters, all while failing to support existing legislation that would actually help people access over-the-counter birth control.”
The laws adopts the language of abortion opponents, suggesting that being pregnant begins on the level of fertilization somewhat than when a fertilized egg is implanted within the uterus. Oral contraception is outlined within the invoice as a drug that “is used to prevent fertilization.”
“The language is kowtowing to the anti-abortion lobby and part of an orchestrated effort to redefine pregnancy based on religious ideology,” stated Dana Singiser, the co-founder of the nonprofit Contraception Access Initiative. “This is the latest in a long line of bills that Republicans throw out there that purport to be pro-contraception bills. When you peel back the layers of the onion, there’s always a catch.”
Ms Miller-Meeks, a doctor, defended the laws, a model of which she has been championing since her days within the Iowa Senate.
“Taking a market-based approach will encourage investment in the over-the-counter birth control space without price controls or mandates, leading to increased access to these products without government overreach,” she stated. “As a pro-life congresswoman, I believe preventing unwanted pregnancies is paramount to protecting the sanctity of life.”
Ms. Miller-Meeks, together with different co-sponsors together with Representative Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma, have opposed Democratic-led efforts to safeguard entry to contraception. They voted final yr with the overwhelming majority of House Republicans to oppose laws to make sure entry to contraception nationwide, a proper that was considered newly underneath menace after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. Anti-abortion teams inspired lawmakers to oppose the measure, claiming that its definition of contraceptives could possibly be interpreted to incorporate tablets that induce abortions. Only eight Republicans voted with Democrats to help the invoice, and most of them are now not in Congress.
The Republican playbook on contraception that Ms. Miller-Meeks and others are using isn’t new. In 2015, former Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, toiling to enchantment to reasonable girls voters, launched the same invoice that purported to permit girls larger entry to contraception by encouraging drugmakers and the F.D.A. to make it simpler to promote contraceptive tablets over-the-counter.
Democrats on the time dismissed the invoice as a political ploy, saying it will lead to much less entry to contraception as a result of it will enable insurers to cease protecting some varieties of contraception.
Since then, Republicans’ issues about interesting to girls voters and independents have solely grown, particularly after final yr’s Supreme Court ruling. In Iowa, the state with the fewest obstetrician gynecologist specialists per capita within the nation, Gov. Kim Reynolds final month signed into regulation a brand new ban on abortions after roughly six weeks of being pregnant, when many ladies have no idea they’re pregnant.
The state of affairs has left Ms. Miller-Meeks in a precarious place. Democrats hope that flipping her seat might be a part of their path to successful again the House majority in 2024. Earlier this month, Christina Bohannan, a former state lawmaker who misplaced to Ms. Miller-Meeks in 2022, introduced she would run for the seat once more. She instantly raised $276,000, greater than every other congressional candidate in Iowa had raised of their first 24 hours.
Ms. Bohannan plans to make abortion rights central to her marketing campaign to unseat Ms. Miller-Meeks.
“About 61 percent of Iowans support the right to abortion in all or most cases,” she stated in an interview. “Representative Miller-Meeks has aligned herself with the most extreme members of her party instead of the people of Iowa on this issue, proposing one abortion ban over another.”
Ms. Bohannan dismissed the contraception invoice as a “purely political” textual content that was drafted “to provide political cover for her own record.”
Source: www.nytimes.com