DeLauro Votes to Protect Access to Contraception

Press Release

Chair of the House Appropriations Committee Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) today voted in support of the Right to Contraception Act, legislation that would enshrine the right to contraception into federal law.

"The activist conservative majority on the Supreme Court has signaled they will go after other civil rights in the wake of their overturning of Roe v. Wade," said Chair DeLauro. "House Democrats are standing firmly against their mission to strip away American freedoms. Today, we voted to add protections for contraception into federal law so that women's healthcare decisions are not disrupted. It was the 1965 case stemming from the courageous actions of Estelle Griswold, Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, located in New Haven, protesting Connecticut's draconian ban on birth control that led to the right to contraception -- and the right to privacy - in this country. Griswold v. Connecticut has been precedent for more than 57 years, and it is imperative that we do not allow the Supreme Court to take any additional rights away from American women."

The Right to Contraception Act would:

Create a statutory right for individuals to obtain contraceptives and to engage in contraception;
Establish a corresponding right for health care providers to provide contraceptives, contraception, and information related to contraception;
Allow the Department of Justice, as well as providers and individuals harmed by restrictions on contraception access made unlawful under the legislation, to go to court to enforce these rights; and
Protect a range of contraceptive methods, devices, and medications used to prevent pregnancy, including but not limited to oral contraceptives, long-acting reversible contraceptives, emergency contraceptives, internal and external condoms, injectables, vaginal barrier methods, transdermal patches, vaginal rings, fertility-awareness based methods, and sterilization procedures.
"The government has no business mandating one size fits all approaches to women's healthcare decisions," continued DeLauro. "It is up to an individual woman, in consultation with her doctor, to make those choices. I will fight to defend American women's reproductive freedom, and to ensure the protections that have existed for decades persist.

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