The Secret War on Birth Control

Hello, sweet Meteor readers,

Happy Tax Day! This year I learned about the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, which sounded heavenly given that my family spent fully $15,000 on daycare last year. Imagine my disappointment when I found out that the maximum credit you can claim is 20% of $3,000…i.e. $600. Womp womp. (And Republicans have contemplated dropping even this piddling credit.) The state of childcare in this country is enraging.

Today, we’re tracking the sneaky, scary erosion of birth control rights in America. Plus, Harvey Weinstein is back in court, and the “broligarchy” gets a dressing-down.

Free daycare on demand,

Nona Willis Aronowitz

WHAT’S GOING ON

The secret war on birth control: From the moment the high court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, one Supreme Court justice signaled that birth control access was in danger. In a concurring opinion back then, Justice Clarence Thomas urged the court to re-examine “demonstrably erroneous decisions” like Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 ruling which granted Americans a constitutional right to birth control.

So what’s happened to birth control since that fateful ruling? Last week, the National Women’s Law Center released a report addressing that question, and it finds that our right to contraception is indeed eroding. Since 2022, some lawmakers have wasted no time proposing or musing about bans on some forms of birth control; a nominee for Michigan attorney general compared emergency contraception to fentanyl. But there’s one big obstacle in their way: Birth control is incredibly popular. Upward of 90% of Americans believe it should be legal. So policymakers have turned to less obvious tactics to restrict contraception.

BIRTH CONTROL PILLS SHOULD BE AS CONTROVERSIAL AS DANGLY EARRINGS. VIA GETTY IMAGES

Lawmakers “know that they can’t attack birth control publicly or on paper, so they’re doing it secretly,” said Kimi Chernoby, senior counsel for reproductive rights and health at the National Women’s Law Center and the primary author of the report. Chernoby pointed to an innocuous-sounding bill called the Medical Ethics Defense Act, passed just last week in the Tennessee Senate that has a good chance of passing the House, given that a subcommittee already approved it. Not once does it mention birth control. But the legislator who sponsored the bill later said in an interview that the law would allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control. This sneakiness can reach the point of absurdity: Texas senator Bryan Hughes, the guy who crafted the state’s abortion ban, just presented a bill that would test wastewater for abortion medication and hormones found in birth control, because of the supposed health risk it poses “especially for pregnant women and children.” Oh, the irony.

And to avoid political blowback, birth control opponents are also going after people on the margins, namely teens (by introducing parental consent laws for birth control) and low-income people (by restricting Title X and Medicaid recipients’ access to contraception). It’s a strategy the report calls “the anti-abortion playbook” because it mirrors anti-abortion activists’ journey from Roe to Dobbs: Start by targeting people who hold less political clout, and inch toward the mainstream from there. They’re also focusing on certain kinds of birth control like emergency contraception, which has been endlessly (and erroneously) attacked by rightwing lawmakers and institutions as a form of abortion, despite the FDA’s explicit clarification in 2022. “Some people are making a conscious decision not to listen to science,” Chernoby said.

CONGRESS TRYING (AND FAILING) TO PROTECT THE RIGHT TO CONTRACEPTION IN 2022. VIA GETTY IMAGES

So what can you do? Since this erosion is mostly on the local and state level for now, Chernoby suggests reaching out to state legislators urging them to codify protections to birth control, which a handful of states have done in the wake of Roe’s fall (and Thomas’ warning). Be sure to call your representatives if you live in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin—all states that have blocked attempts to pass a Right to Contraception Act in the past. And if lawmakers don’t listen, make your outrage known. Chernoby said that when these issues get widespread coverage, restrictions often get reversed. For instance, in 2023, Iowa’s attorney general paused payments to hundreds of sexual assault victims for the emergency contraceptive Plan B. But she backed down after an outcry from Democrats and reproductive rights advocates, who pointed out that paying for pregnancy prevention should be the last thing survivors have to worry about.

“When these attacks start happening more in the open,” Chernoby said (and she thinks they eventually will), “I predict there will be a lot of resistance.” Let’s make sure she’s right.

 AND:

• Fans of academic freedom (hi!) breathed a sigh of relief when Harvard announced yesterday that it wouldn’t comply with a mind-boggling list of requests from the Trump administration. That list—which, among other things, called for “viewpoint diversity” in admissions and hiring—went far beyond more limited (but still batshit) demands aimed at places like Columbia. Harvard’s defiance wasn’t exactly a given, judging by its previous concessions, including forcing out its first Black woman president, Claudine Gay. But its stand feels like a big, potentially tide-turning beacon for other institutions, and was applauded by alums across the globe, including Barack Obama. “Harvard reminded the world that learning, innovation and transformative growth will not yield to bullying and authoritarian whims,” said Anurima Bhargava, a Harvard alumna, civil rights lawyer, and advocate for sexual assault victims.

• Harvey Weinstein is back in court in New York today for a new trial. In case you’ve forgotten, last year the state’s Court of Appeals overturned his 2020 conviction, determining that it had been a mistake to allow testimony from women whose accusations were not part of the charges he faced. This time around, though, he faces new charges from an unnamed woman, along with charges from accusers Miriam “Mimi” Haleyi and Jessica Mann, who were both part of the first trial. So far, jury selection has been bumpy; “I don’t like the guy, he is a really bad guy,” one potential juror volunteered after being dismissed from consideration. Again, we say: Who says #MeToo is dead?

• British author and investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who brought the Cambridge Analytica scandal to light six years ago, weighed in on the threat of the “broligarchy” in a new TED talk. “We are now in techno-authoritarianism,” she warned. “Some people are calling this ‘oligarchy,’ but it’s actually bigger than that.” Her advice? To “digitally disobey”—to refuse the cookies, to not give your real name, to use Signal. You can watch the full talk here.

• Forty-three women in Argentina are suing Opus Dei, accusing the Catholic organization of forcing them into isolation and grueling, unpaid domestic labor as children and teens. Argentinian federal prosecutors allege that Opus Dei routinely recruited girls from poor rural families, then exploited them. “They treated me like a slave, without any capacity to think or act or do,” one of the accusers told the Guardian. A judge will now decide whether to proceed to trial.

• After the all-women crew returned safely from space, Gayle King gushed that she now “can take on anything.” But ngl, her face tells a different, far wearier story…

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