Senate Republicans have blocked legislation designed to protect women’s access to contraception. They argued Wednesday that the bill was just a political stunt as Democrats mount an election-year effort to put GOP senators on the record on reproductive rights issues.
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Maine Sen. Susan Collins, one of two Republicans to vote with Democrats to move forward on the bill, said Monday that she would want the legislation to be amended to include more religious liberty protections.
“The Democrats are using their power to push an alarmist and false narrative that there is a problem accessing contraception,” said Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, the top Republican on the Senate Health, Labor, Education and Pensions Committee.
Democrats seized on the contraception issue after former President Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, said in an interview last month that he was open to supporting restrictions on birth control.
In the GOP-led House, Democratic Rep. Kathy Manning of North Carolina is leading a longshot effort to get enough signatures to discharge a similar version of the Senate’s contraception bill from committee and put it on the floor — a tactic used when leadership won’t bring up legislation for a vote.
That bill comes after Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled frozen embryos can be considered children under state law earlier this year, causing several clinics to suspend IVF treatments.
The state later enacted a law providing legal protections for IVF clinics, but Democrats have argued that Congress should act to guarantee nationwide access to reproductive care to try and prevent courts from making those decisions.
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