The right for reproductive healthcare, including contraceptives and abortions, is a political issue for conservatives who are strategising how to win over voters – a majority of which agree that Americans have a right to access it.
Despite the ban on abortions having real-life health consequences for millions in the US, and a potential ban on contraceptives sparking fears of similar outcomes, conservative political consultant Kellyanne Conway is advising Republicans to get friendlier with contraceptives all while she mocks abortions.
In December, Ms Conway held a meeting with GOP members and staff in Congress as well as campaigns to advise them to advocate for birth control in order to ease voters’ fears about limiting access to contraception, according to Politico.
Ms Conway said the strategy would undermine Democrats’ narrative that Republicans are attacking women’s health choices, Fox News reported.
It arrives after polling conducted by Independent Women’s Voices and KA Consulting shows that eight in 10 pro-life people agreed that access to contraception was more important than ever.
But within the same month, Ms Conway mocked abortions by characterising Democrats as people who “wake up every morning and they look at the calendar on the iPhone and it says January 6, 2021… and then they get into an electric vehicle and go get an abortion.”
The conflicting rhetoric around reproductive healthcare shows how Republicans are separating the issues of abortion and contraceptives in an attempt to secure support from voters concerned about their future access to birth control.
Ms Conway told Fox News, "When [Democrats] say, ‘We’re for women, and we’re for women’s health,’ what they really mean is abortion. It’s all a euphemism for abortion.”
But others disagree, believing the two issues to be closely intertwined.
A spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee told The Daily Beast that no “fancy marketing will change this fundamental truth: House Republicans have consistently pushed legislation to crack down on both abortion and contraception access in their assault on women’s reproductive freedoms.”
Senate Republicans blocked a bill last year that would have codified the right to contraceptives, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has a history of trying to block access to birth control and House Republicans introduced appropriations to a spending bill that would cut funding to Title X – a family planning program that provides subsidised contraception access to low-income people.
