Republican Senator Pretends His Party Isn’t Gunning for Birth Control

Republican Senator and Trump-critic-turned-cultist J.D. Vance tried to sanitize his party’s record, rhetoric, and ambitions regarding reproductive rights and sexual liberty—even as evidence mounts the GOP will move aggressively to suppress those things if they take power in 2024.

During an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Vance was asked about a recent Texas case in which a woman with a life-threatening, nonviable pregnancy was denied an emergency abortion by the state’s Republican attorney general and right wing Supreme Court. 

Vance didn’t address the case specifically, but urged elected Republicans to accept that Americans “do not want blanket abortion bans,” before suggesting that his party needs “to win the trust back of the American people. And one of the ways to do that is to be the truly pro-family party. I think we are. We have got to carry that message forward and actually enact some public policy to that effect.”

This prompted Tapper to ask Vance about the GOP’s stance on the right to contraception; Vance, in turn, denied that “any Republican, at least not a Republican with a brain” wants to take that right away from people.

However, all but ten Republican Congresspeople in 2022 voted against codifying the right to contraception, including Speaker Mike Johnson, the most powerful elected Republican whose personal and political history is littered with attacks against contraception. 

Additionally, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas declared in a concurrence in the Dobbs decision which overturned Roe v. Wade that the right-wing court should revisit similar cases, including Griswold v. Connecticut, which guaranteed the right to birth control for married couples.

And then there’s Donald Trump, Vance’s patron and the party’s absolute leader, also granted employer exceptions to an Obamacare requirement that insurance companies consider birth control preventative care.

These facts mean either Vance is a liar—or he’s implying that most Republicans, most GOP leaders, other prominent conservatives, and Trump himself are brainless.

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