In the right-wing worldview, the only appropriate way to promote contraception is to tie access to contraception to promoting marriage and pregnancy. But Project 2025 also seeks to restrict contraception in general, deeming the one-pill prescription-only emergency contraceptive Ella a “potential abortifacient,” and claiming it is a “close cousin” to mifepristone, one of the pills used in medication abortion. This is misleading, since Ella, like Plan B, inhibits ovulation, which prevents pregnancy; mifepristone, by contrast, terminates pregnancy. Accurate medical information however is not the purpose of such a program; rather, using the figleaf of contraception access, these programs gag healthcare providers and push misinformation, stigmatizing contraception and abortion. Warping “contraception access” in this way ultimately restricts access: According to Guttmacher, the Trump gag rule reduced Title X services nationally by about 46 percent, leading to potentially 1.6 million fewer women receiving contraception services, if they could not get services elsewhere.
Conway et. al’s effort to push Republicans to message contraception access has been building for some time. In August, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley floated pro-contraception rhetoric in the Republican primary debate, as a way to evade discussion of abortion. Journalist Sarah Posner, who has long covered the right, called this “a transparent ploy to hoodwink voters,” one that should not be trusted. “The recent history of the GOP and its unbreakable bond with the Christian right,” she continued, “shows that the party has only grown more extreme on both abortion and contraception.” About a year ago, she noted, the Republican Governor Kim Reynolds of Iowa also garnered attention from Politico for her support of making birth control pills available over-the counter, part of what they said some Republicans had dubbed the “new pro-life agenda.” Two Washington Post columnists, one anti-abortion and one pro-abortion rights, repeated the phrase in September (along with “a pro-family agenda”) saying it was something that even those who disagree on abortion can support.
But the idea that there’s a broad base of Republicans who would celebrate the end of Roe yet hail wider contraception access is a fantasy about a moderate party that no longer exists, if indeed it ever did: It’s worth noting that for all the good press, Governor Reynolds’s contraception access bill failed. And her support for the bill was always strategic: When speaking to the top Christian right group in her state at an event celebrating the end of Roe, for example, Reynolds bragged about the six-week abortion ban she supported, but not her contraception bill, which this group opposed.