In light of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Senate Democrats advanced the Right to Contraception Act today to create federal legislation to guarantee contraceptive rights nationwide for women. The bill will need 60 votes today to officially begin work on the bill. 

“Today, we live in a country where not only tens of millions of women have been robbed of their reproductive freedoms – we also live in a country where tens of millions more worry about something as basic as birth control,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, said in a Senate floor speech. 

Democrats are working to keep reproductive health issues front and center in the lead-up to election day and also get Republicans on the record of rejecting a right as historically fundamental as contraception. Senator Tammy Duckworth, D-IL, said in a speech today, “We need to pass the Right to Contraception Act to protect people’s reproductive freedoms.”  The Act, however, is likely to fail to reach the requisite 60 votes as Republicans seek to shut down a bill they believe is a show vote. 

Senator Katie Britt, R-AL, wrote on X, “There is no threat to access to contraception, which is legal in every state and required by law to be offered at no cost by health insurers, and it’s disgusting that Democrats are fearmongering on this important issue to score cheap political points.”

Despite the likelihood of this piece of legislation being blocked by Republicans today, the Senate Democrats also introduced this week sweeping legislation, the Right to IVF Act, to protect in vitro fertilization given the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year that embryos are children and parents and practitioners could be subject to wrongful death actions. This legislation, like the Right to Contraception Act, is also unlikely to pass.