The latest attack on U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh posits the absurd notion that his confirmation could threaten contraception access, as well as abortion.
In a column for Teen Vogue, Dawn Huckelbridge, senior director for women’s rights at American Bridge, echoed abortion activists’ concerns that Roe v. Wade could be at stake if Kavanaugh is confirmed.
With moderate Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement, Kavanaugh could swing the court to a conservative majority and be a deciding opinion on vital issues like abortion restrictions and Roe v. Wade.
But Huckelbridge warned that his appointment also could affect the future of contraception access in United States.
“If the Supreme Court really wanted to undo the legal right to privacy that is recognized in Roe v. Wade, it could also turn to Griswold v. Connecticut, where the Court affirmed the constitutional privacy right to use contraception,” she wrote.
She continued:
Members of the Court have already challenged privacy as a constitutional right, and specifically its use in Griswold to protect contraception access. Chief Justice Roberts has referenced the “so-called ‘right to privacy… such an amorphous right is not the found in the Constitution.” Justice Thomas also called the right to privacy, as found in the Constitution, an “invention.” In 2014, Justice Alito wrote the 5-4 decision against coverage of contraception in the Hobby Lobby case, noting that according to the plaintiffs’ religious beliefs — and against the medical community and the Food and Drug Administration — the “contraceptive methods at issue are abortifacients.”
At another point, she misrepresented the Trump administration’s work, writing:
The Trump administration as a whole has also made clear it does not want to support contraception initiatives. They changed the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program so that it would focus on an abstinence-first method, even though studies have shown those don’t work. He rolled back the contraceptive insurance mandate, which improved access by requiring employers to cover contraceptives in their insurance plans. His officials espouse harmful notions of “sexual refusal skills” over proven scientific family-planning methods. And he is now threatening Title X, the country’s official family-planning program, with an unprecedented domestic gag rule which could jeopardize access to contraception, STI testing, and cancer screenings for four million patients.
She did not explain what is so wrong about “sexual refusal skills,” and ignored other studies that indicated the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program under the pro-abortion Obama administration was not successful. And the proposed new Title X rule does not cut contraception access at all; it simply forces the billion-dollar abortion industry to stop propping up their businesses with Americans’ tax dollars.
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What’s more, Trump offered to support funding for Planned Parenthood, which touts itself as a huge contraception provider, if it gave up aborting unborn babies, nothing more. Planned Parenthood refused.
Attempting to stir up fear with her base, Huckelbridge claimed the “far right fringe” is expanding to become the center of the Republican Party and threatening to “keep women in the home, having more babies, and out of public life and political power.”
But she based her assertions on her personal observations, not polling numbers or research data. At one point, she even admitted that almost all Americans support access to contraception (96 percent). She did not explain why so many Americans would work against something they strongly support.
Most pro-life organizations also do not take a position on artificial contraception, the exception being forms that may cause abortions. Huckelbridge brought up the Hobby Lobby case as an example of what could happen in the future, but Hobby Lobby did not object to all forms of contraception. It provided most forms in its employee health plans, but objected to several forms that may cause abortions.
What many conservatives are fighting against is not contraception itself but the government forcing religious individuals and groups to pay for it for others.
Abortion activists have been somewhat successful in manipulating this narrative, turning it into opposition to contraception rather than the true concerns – conscience rights and religious freedom. This tactic also hides their radical pro-abortion agenda.
Huckelbridge’s column is little more than baseless fearmongering to activate abortion supporters about the real issue: abortions for any reason up to birth.
