House Dems move to protect contraception from Supreme Court

WASHINGTON (AP) — The right to use contraceptives would be inscribed into law under a measure Democrats are pushing through the House, their latest campaign-season response to worries that a conservative Supreme Court that’s erased federal abortion rights could go further.

The House planned to vote Thursday on the legislation and send it to the Senate, where its fate seemed uncertain. The push underscored that Democrats are latching onto their own version of culture-war battles to appeal to female, progressive and minority voters by casting the court and Republicans as extremists intent on obliterating rights taken for granted for years.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said now that the “radical, Republican-stacked Supreme Court" overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, GOP lawmakers want to do more than ban abortion.

“Those of us who’ve been in Congress a while can tell you that they have been against contraception, family planning, birth control the entire time,” said Pelosi, D-Calif. “This is their moment. Clarence Thomas has made that clear. They’re right down to the fundamentals of privacy that they want to erase.”

In his opinion overturning Roe v. Wade last month, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the court should now review other precedents. He mentioned rulings that affirmed the rights of same-sex marriage in 2015, same-sex intimate relationships in 2003 and married couples' use of contraceptives in 1965.

Thomas did not specify a 1972 decision that legalized the use of contraceptives by unmarried people as well, but Democrats say they consider that at risk as well.

Thomas and congressional Republicans “are about one thing, control," said Rep. Kathy Manning, D-N.C., chief sponsor of the contraception bill, which has around 150 co-sponsors, all Democrats.

“These...