Jessica Valenti
Republicans Won’t Stop at Abortion
Eventually, they’ll go after birth control, too
Louisiana became the latest state to pass a near-total ban on abortion this week, joining the cascade of state-level legislation that seeks to criminalize the procedure and challenge Roe v. Wade. As extreme as these laws are, they’re just the beginning.
As abortion rights are chipped away, anti-abortion activists and legislators will start to target the morning-after pill and IUDs; even birth control pills will be at risk. Contraception will once again be up for debate, access to it eroded with the same methodical approach the GOP took with abortion.
This isn’t catastrophic thinking or, as women have been told for so long, an overreaction. It’s simply a clear-eyed understanding of the groundwork conservatives have been establishing for years — namely, claiming that the most popular forms of birth control are actually abortifacients.
In 2014, for example, arts store behemoth Hobby Lobby went to the Supreme Court because it didn’t want to cover employees’ birth control — in part because the company’s religious founder believed certain contraception causes abortions. At the time, major mainstream anti-abortion organizations like the Susan B. Anthony List and Americans United for…
