When, shortly after the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022, Democrats tried to pass a bill aimed at safeguarding access to contraception nationwide, all but eight Republicans opposed it. Now, Senate Democrats are unveiling a new plan to attempt to force a vote on contraceptive protections—and they have some highly visual help: a 20-foot purple inflatable IUD that the reproductive rights group Americans for Contraception has installed outside of Washington, DC’s Union Station on Wednesday.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
“Americans for Contraception sponsored a 20-foot IUD in front of Union Station today, in order to call attention to a critical vote in the US Senate on the Right to Contraception Act, a simple bill that would codify the right to condoms, the pill, and IUDs. More than 90% of Americans support contraception, and this legislation would enshrine the right for providers to prescribe and patients to seek and receive contraception,” the organization told Vogue in a statement on Wednesday. Given that former president and current 2024 Republican frontrunner Donald Trump recently made (and then walked back) comments about potentially restricting access to birth control, the IUD sculpture—and the political fight for reproductive rights that it represents—feels especially apropos.
While President Joe Biden’s administration has been criticized by some for placing insufficient emphasis on reproductive rights, the push for a legal right to contraception (which follows another recent legislative package aimed at expanding access to in vitro fertilization, or IVF) represents a bold move for US Democrats. While the bill, formally known as the Right to Contraception Act, seems unlikely to make it to Biden’s desk thanks to opposition from Republicans, hopefully it will serve the purpose of signaling to the GOP that Democrats and their activist allies won’t back down on the issue of reproductive rights.
