One of my former partners had a way of rephrasing the Bible: “What the lord giveth, the lord can take away.” I fear he may be correct.
Supreme Court Justice Thomas concurred with the majority in the Dobbs 2022 decision, taking away the right to abortion care in all states. It is frightening that he said, in that decision, that the Court should reconsider “Griswold” – the 1965 decision that made contraception legal nationwide. Unfortunately, Thomas is not alone. There has been an undercurrent of right-wing people and politicians who feel that birth control should be outlawed. Perhaps they come from the religious viewpoint that “every sperm is sacred,” to quote Monty Python. Or perhaps they want more poor people to do the world’s dirty work so the rich can sit back and enjoy life.
A bill in Congress intends to ensure our right to contraception. Called the Right to Contraception Act, its purpose is “to 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.”
This bill passed in the House in 2022 but was blocked in the Senate two years later. Some Democratic senators are still trying to pass it. Sen. John Hickenlooper has written: “I am a cosponsor of the Right to Contraception Act and voted to advance the bill when it came to the Senate floor on June 5, 2025.”
Legislators in at least four states have tried to limit access to contraception by various means. Some states have restricted public funding. Indiana law prohibits placing an IUD after a woman gives birth, based on the misapprehension that IUDs cause abortions. Some states have also included contraceptives, including emergency contraception, in their restrictive abortion laws. I wish it were as easy to poke holes in these lawmakers’ condoms as it is to poke holes in their reasoning.
Colorado has legal support for our right to birth control, as do some other states. Ours is called the Reproductive Health Equity Act, part of the 2022 law guaranteeing access to abortion care.
There is another glimmer of hope in Washington. Both houses of Congress have bills to stop the Global Gag Rule, which prevents any recipient of federal funding from discussing abortion with patients. When women cannot find out about legal abortion services, they often seek unsafe alternatives. The Global Gag Rule is responsible for the deaths of thousands of desperate people.
The Global Health, Empowerment and Rights Act – known as the Global HER Act – would reverse the Global Gag Rule and prevent any similar policy in the future. It would allow health care workers the freedom to tell patients how to access safe abortion services and would save the lives of mothers and teenagers.
The World Health Organization – a body the United States no longer participates in – has said reproductive rights rest on the basic right of all people to decide freely the number and timing of their children, and to have the information and means to do so.
Please contact your senators and ask them to support the Right to Contraception Act (S. 4381). I suspect that all U.S. senators have used contraception at some time in their lives – all Americans should have that right. Also ask your senators and representatives to support the Global HER Act: S. 280 in the Senate and H.R. 764 in the House.
Richard Grossman, M.D., is a retired obstetrics-gynecology physician who lives in the Bayfield area. Read his blog at population-matters.org.
