She had barely opened her town hall to questions when Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a Republican from a competitive Iowa district, was pressured to defend her opposition to abortion rights.
“One of the most important functions of the federal government is to protect lives,” Ms. Miller-Meeks, who won the 2020 election by just six votes, told a sparse crowd this month in Iowa City, a younger, more progressive part of the state. her. district where she rarely campaigns.
Ms. Miller-Meeks then quickly moved to safer political territory, telling her constituents how she had also supported legislation aimed at expanding access to contraception.
“The best way to avoid abortion is to prevent pregnancy,” she said.
It’s an increasingly common strategy among vulnerable Republicans in the House of Representatives — especially those in politically competitive districts — who seek to reconcile their party’s harsh anti-abortion policies with the views of voters in their districts, particularly independents and women.
While many of these GOP lawmakers voted in the House of Representatives this year to restrict access to abortion — maintaining a stance that some Republicans admit hurt their party in last year’s midterm elections — Ms. -Meeks and others spent part of the congressional summer break by talking up their support for access to birth control, which is widely popular across the country and across party lines.
Appearing to have to embrace access to birth control has become a necessity for Republican candidates at all levels, who are concerned that their party’s opposition to abortion rights has alienated women, especially after the Supreme Court’s decision last year to impeach Roe v. Wade and the extreme US abortion bans. GOP-led states that followed.
“Can’t we all agree that birth control should be available,” Nikki Haley, the only Republican woman in the presidential primary, said last week during the first primary debate, trying to counter Democrats’ attacks on the reproductive health issue. to weaken.
In states where abortion is now banned, 43 percent of voters say access to abortion should be easier, up from 31 percent in 2019, according to a recent Pew Research survey.
Defending access to birth control in these states is “smart politics and good policy,” said Nicole McCleskey, a Republican pollster. “Republicans have long said we need to find alternatives to abortion. This is a. There are many Republicans who have long had a reputation for promoting birth control. It is a meaningful effort to engage female voters.”
Just before legislators’ long summer break, Ms. Miller-Meeks was part of a group of Republican women from the House of Representatives who introduced the Orally Taken Contraception Act of 2023, a bill they introduced as a way to limit access to contraception. and that she called “A major step forward for healthcare.”
Abortion rights advocates argue the legislation is essentially pointless and merely an attempt by Republican lawmakers to mislead voters about their positions on women’s health. But for the Republican women who support the bill, the bill offers an elegant way to steer the conversation away from the divisive issue of abortion.
Ms. Miller-Meeks was assisted in the legislation by Representative Jen Kiggans, Republican of Virginia, a prime target of the Democrats in next year’s election. Ms. Kiggans, a nurse, voted with her party in July to add wording to the annual defense policy bill that would reverse a Pentagon policy aimed at preserving access to abortion services for military personnel no matter where they work. be stationed. weeks ago she emphasized her advocacy for expanding access to contraception.
In addition to co-sponsoring the Access to Birth Control Act, Ms. Kiggans supported a defense measure amendment by Representative Veronica Escobar, Texas Democrat, to eliminate the co-payment for birth control for military members and their families.
The birth control bill introduced in July, co-sponsored by at least eight Republican women and endorsed by the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, would direct the Food and Drug Administration to issue guidelines for companies seeking to make oral products. contraception available without a prescription. But it is not clear what practical effect this would have.
Only two pharmaceutical companies are actively offering non-prescription contraception. One of them, Opill, was approved for sale without a prescription even before the legislation came into effect. The other, Cadence Health, has been in the filing process with the FDA for years and doesn’t need the guidelines the bill imposes on the agency.
Abortion rights groups have dismissed the bill as a stunt designed to mask Republicans’ push to crack down on both abortion and access to contraceptives.
“The legislation is not a real attempt to expand birth control,” said Karen Stone, vice president of public policy at the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “They are trying to save face with voters while failing to support existing legislation that would actually help people access over-the-counter birth control.”
The legislation adopts the language of abortion opponents, suggesting that pregnancy begins at the point of conception and not when a fertilized egg is implanted in the uterus. Oral contraception is defined in the bill as a drug “used to prevent conception.”
“This language is a reference to the anti-abortion lobby and is part of an orchestrated effort to redefine pregnancy based on religious ideology,” said Dana Singiser, co-founder of the nonprofit Contraception Access Initiative. “This is the latest in a long line of bills being brought forward by Republicans claiming to be pro-birth control laws. If you peel the layers off the onion, there is always a catch.”
Ms. Miller-Meeks, a physician, defended the legislation, a version she has championed since her days in the Iowa Senate.
“Taking a market-based approach will encourage investment in the over-the-counter contraceptive space without price controls or mandates, which will lead to better access to these products without giving government too much leverage,” she said. “As a pro-life congressman, I believe preventing unwanted pregnancies is critical to protecting the sanctity of life.”
Ms. Miller-Meeks, along with other co-sponsors, including Representative Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma, has opposed Democrat-led efforts to secure access to birth control. They voted last year with the overwhelming majority of Republicans in the House of Representatives to oppose legislation that would guarantee access to birth control nationwide, a right considered newly threatened after the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court. Anti-abortion groups encouraged lawmakers to oppose the measure, claiming that the definition of contraceptives could be interpreted as abortion-inducing pills. Only eight Republicans voted with Democrats to support the bill, and most of them are no longer in Congress.
The Republican playbook on birth control used by Ms. Miller-Meeks and others is not new. In 2015, former Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, who worked to appeal to moderate female voters, introduced a similar bill that purported to give women greater access to birth control by encouraging drug companies and the FDA to make it easier to market birth control pills without recipe to sell.
At the time, Democrats dismissed the bill as a political gimmick, saying it would reduce access to birth control because it could prevent insurers from reimbursing certain forms of birth control.
Since then, Republican concerns about attracting female voters and independent voters have only deepened, especially after last year’s Supreme Court ruling. In Iowa, the state with the fewest obstetric gynecologists per capita in the country, Governor Kim Reynolds last month signed a new ban on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, when many women don’t know they are pregnant.
The situation has put Mrs. Miller-Meeks in a precarious position. Democrats hope turning her seat around will be part of their path to regaining the majority in the House of Representatives in 2024. Earlier this month, Christina Bohannan, a former state legislator who lost to Ms. Miller-Meeks in 2022, announced that she would run for the seat. again. She immediately raised $276,000, more than any other Iowa congressional candidate raised in the first 24 hours.
Ms. Bohannan intends to put abortion rights at the center of her campaign to impeach Ms. Miller-Meeks.
“About 61 percent of Iowans support the right to abortion in all or most cases,” she said in an interview. “Representative Miller-Meeks has aligned herself with the most extreme members of her party rather than the people of Iowa on this issue, proposing one abortion ban over another.”
Ms Bohannan dismissed the contraceptive bill as a “purely political” text drafted “to provide political cover for her own record.”
