Senate Republicans block proposed Right to Contraception Act

June 5 (UPI) -- Opposition from Senate Republican lawmakers Wednesday defeated the proposed Right to Contraception Act.

The Senate voted 51-39 in favor of the proposed measure, which required 60 affirming votes to pass.

Two GOP senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, voted in favor of the measure.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., initially voted in favor of the measure but changed his vote to oppose it to make it eligible for future consideration.

The bill would "protect a person's ability to access contraceptives and to engage in contraception, and to protect a health care provider's ability to provide contraceptives, contraception, and information related to contraception."

Republicans had been expected to prevent the bill's advancement, blocking the effort to enact national contraception rights legislation.

In a statement, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said, "It's a huge overreach. It doesn't make any exceptions for conscience. ... It's a phony vote because contraception, to my knowledge, is not illegal. It's not unavailable."

The bill was first introduced after the Supreme Court struck down the federal right to choose abortions, a decision made possible by three justices appointed by now-convicted felon and former president Donald Trump and fellow Republicans.

"Today, we live in a country where not only tens of millions of women have been robbed of their reproductive freedoms," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor. "We also live in a country where tens of millions more worry about something as basic as birth control.That's utterly medieval."

To advance the bill guaranteeing federal contraception rights nationwide, Democrats need Republicans for procedural votes.

It's part of a larger push on reproductive rights by Democrats in Congress that includes in vitro fertilization.

Senate GOP whip John Thune of South Dakota said Republicans will advance their own versions of IVF and contraception bills, claiming that would show Republicans are for contraception.

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said at a news conference this push by Democrats is an effort to have Republicans declare with their votes whether they support legal protections for reproductive rights.

Markey said, "This vote poses one simple question: Do you believe Americans' access to birth control should be protected?"

On Tuesday, nearly two years after the Dobbs decision overturned abortion rights under Roe vs. Wade, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee held a reproductive rights hearing to examine how state abortion bans are creating "a healthcare nightmare across America."

Committee Chair Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., told committee members, "A forced pregnancy does not have to make headlines to make someone's life a living hell."

Murray called the Republican IVF bill a PR tool to "hide their extremism."

She asserted that women's experiences with the GOP's record on reproductive rights is too clear for the Republican Party to deny.