Overturning Roe V Wade Here’s How It Could Threaten Birth Control Access

By On Jun 27, 2022

The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade Friday and gave states license to ban abortion—increasing the likelihood that many contraception methods like birth control pills and Plan B could be targeted next, which some lawmakers have already suggested they want to do.“If we had to guess, we suspect the prospects of this Court approving bans on contraception are low. But once again, the future significance of today’s opinion will be decided in the future,” liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor wrote in their dissent against the court’s abortion ruling. “At the least, today’s opinion will fuel the fight to get contraception, and any other issues with a moral dimension, out of the Fourteenth Amendment and into state legislatures.”Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, denied to Forbes that anti-abortion advocates would try to target birth control access next, calling the suggestion “scaremongering.” “Restrictions are not gonna happen,” Tobias told Forbes. “Contraception is not taking the life of an innocent human being.”Whether Republican lawmakers will start taking aim at contraception by introducing bills that ban it specifically or could be used to restrict it. Idaho state Rep. Brendan Crane, who chairs the Idaho House’s State Affairs Committee, suggested in May that lawmakers could discuss banning emergency contraceptives like Plan B, and Louisiana lawmakers proposed an abortion ban—which ultimately failed—that could have been construed to restrict contraception.68%. That’s the share of U. S. adults in an April Morning Consult poll who said states should provide free access to birth control if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Large majorities—including approximately half of Republicans—say they’d support making birth control even more accessible if abortion is restricted, with 65% backing increased public funding for family planning and birth control services and 62% favoring requirements for all employer health insurance plans to cover birth control. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday as part of a case concerning Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban and whether states can restrict the procedure even before a fetus is viable. Justice Samuel Alito delivered the court’s opinion, which said Roe was “egregiously wrong” and argued the case should be overturned because the right to an abortion is not expressly stated in the Constitution or “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” Four justices—Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett—signed on to Alito’s opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts issued a separate concurrence agreeing with the judgment and court’s the three liberal justices dissented. Critics have warned the court’s broad ruling would likely have far-reaching consequences, and in addition to birth control, critics have also said rulings upholding same-sex and interracial marriage could be at risk, as well as the court’s ruling in Brown v.