Chuck Darwin<p>“Fetal personhood” activists struggle to maintain the fiction they are neutral on birth control</p><p>When asked about their intentions to restrict or protect access to birth control, Republican lawmakers and leaders of the anti-abortion movement will typically point out the fact that there’s no bill currently under consideration explicitly aimed at banning <a href="https://c.im/tags/contraception" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>contraception</span></a>.</p><p>As journalist Jessica Valenti noted in her "Abortion, Every Day" newsletter, the president of Ohio Right to Life mocked a state Democrat who warned of the risk to birth control by saying, <br />“she can’t cite a piece of legislation that bans contraception … it’s fear-mongering.” </p><p>Susan B. Anthony <a href="https://c.im/tags/Pro" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Pro</span></a>-<a href="https://c.im/tags/Life" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Life</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/America" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>America</span></a>’s website calls it a “MYTH” that Republicans want to stop people from getting birth control. </p><p>“FACT: No state anywhere has banned birth control,” it says.</p><p>And yet taking one big swing to restrict access has never been the strategy of the anti-contraception playbook. </p><p>Rather, activists either maintain neutrality on birth control or say nothing while actively working to conflate abortion with birth control and pass laws that redefine life as beginning at conception.</p><p>As journalist Christina Cauterucci pointed out at Slate, the anti-abortion group <a href="https://c.im/tags/Americans" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Americans</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/United" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>United</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/for" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>for</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Life" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Life</span></a> claims on its website that it takes “no stance on the underlying issue of contraceptive use,” <br />but elsewhere it insists that people who use emergency contraception<br /> “take the lives of their unborn children.” </p><p>When Mother Jones reporter Kiera Butler attended the annual conference of the anti-abortion group <a href="https://c.im/tags/Heartbeat" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Heartbeat</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/International" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>International</span></a> in 2022, she found restriction of birth control to be a major theme, with several sessions dedicated to the topic.</p><p>The push to redefine the start of <a href="https://c.im/tags/personhood" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>personhood</span></a> as the point of <a href="https://c.im/tags/conception" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>conception</span></a> holds real implications for fertility treatments and the wide range of available birth control methods. </p><p>Many lawmakers in states with such “fetal personhood” laws on the books have not fully grappled with the practical consequences of how enforcing those laws in the post-Roe era might work.</p><p>In the near future, most Republicans will likely continue to dismiss the idea that there’s any threat to birth control at all, and leaders of anti-abortion organizations will surely do their best to change the subject.</p><p>But ♦️pay attention to how fights over expanding access to birth control<br /> — including nonhormonal methods like condoms <br />— play out. </p><p>♦️Pay attention to proposals to gut funding for <a href="https://c.im/tags/TitleX" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>TitleX</span></a>, a federal program that provides birth control to millions of low-income people in the United States. </p><p>♦️Pay attention to efforts in Congress to restrict access to contraception in foreign aid spending bills. </p><p>♦️And pay attention to how courts and lawmakers aim to expand the definition of abortion.</p><p>(4/4)</p><p><a href="https://www.vox.com/24087411/anti-abortion-roe-dobbs-birth-control-contraception-ivf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">vox.com/24087411/anti-abortion</span><span class="invisible">-roe-dobbs-birth-control-contraception-ivf</span></a></p><p> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Human" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Human</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Life" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Life</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/International" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>International</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/IUDs" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>IUDs</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Students" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Students</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/for" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>for</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Life" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Life</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Marjorie" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Marjorie</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Taylor" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Taylor</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Greene" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Greene</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/PlanB" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>PlanB</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Lauren" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Lauren</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Boebert" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Boebert</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Matt" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Matt</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Rosendale" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Rosendale</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Pulse" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Pulse</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Life" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Life</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Advocates" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Advocates</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Tea" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Tea</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Party" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Party</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Catholic" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Catholic</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Church" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Church</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Hobby" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Hobby</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Lobby" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Lobby</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Roe" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Roe</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Marsha" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Marsha</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Blackburn" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Blackburn</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Mike" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Mike</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Braun" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Braun</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Griswold" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Griswold</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Roe" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Roe</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Dobbs" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Dobbs</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Clarence" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Clarence</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Thomas" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Thomas</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Blake" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Blake</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Masters" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Masters</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Birth" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Birth</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/control" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>control</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Pregnancy" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Pregnancy</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/implantation" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>implantation</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/implantation" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>implantation</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/conception" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>conception</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/birth" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>birth</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/IVF" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>IVF</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Alabama" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Alabama</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/disgusting" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>disgusting</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Joseph" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Joseph</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Scheidler" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Scheidler</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Randall" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Randall</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Terry" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Terry</span></a></p>