this one,
House voted mostly along party lines to guarantee our right to contraceptives.
The vote was 228 to 195.
And this was the house taking the first step to guarantee our right to
use birth control condoms, I.
U. D. S.
And other forms of contraception.
The legislation is very similar to the vote that we reported on yesterday to
guarantee the right to same sex marriage.
And it's a direct response to the majority opinion in which Clarence thomas
included in the Dobbs v.
Jackson right up to overturn roe v wade, where he said in future cases,
we should reconsider all of this court's substantive due process
precedents including Griswold Lawrence and Obergefell.
So the process, you know, for the Supreme Court hearing cases is pretty complex.
Usually someone's constitutional rights are violated in a state law somewhere.
The case is usually one where there's controversy in the lower courts,
there are competing rulings and then the court is petition.
The Supreme Court is petitions.
These are called writs of certiorari And there are about 7000 to
8000 potential cases that the Supreme Court could hear every year and
it only takes a vote of about four justices to decide to hear those cases.
And so this is Clarence Thomas basically asking for
cases to be submitted to the court so that they can overturn
our access to birth control, gay marriage and gay sex.
And trump deliberately nominated justices that he knew would do this.
And because they can just make the decision to hear the cases that they want
by having three of those four justices nominated by donald trump.
We now have the court just pushing An ideological agenda and
they're deliberately making choices that are unpopular.
So in 2017-2019 there was a survey that was conducted
in 65.3% of women aged 15 to 49 in the United States
were currently using contraception at the time of the survey.
And virtually all women of reproductive age in 2006-2010,
whoever had sexual intercourse have used at least one
contraceptive method at some point in their lifetime.
The results of that survey were 99% or
53 million women aged 15-44 in the United States.
It's important to point out that birth control pills are not just used for
pregnancy.
There are women who struggle with hormonal imbalances, really intense period pain And
the pillow is used to to regulate those hormones.
And this was a huge survey.
So members of the right can't say that this is, you know,
dr data because over 12,000 women were interviewed,
this isn't the result of of just sampling bias or bad research.
And so if the Supreme Court were to overturn Griswold V Connecticut in
the future.
And we didn't have this legislation in place.
We would think that the right would continue to lose public support since so
many people use contraceptives and enjoy this, right?
But it's not known by everyone in the country that donald trump.
And republicans are responsible for
getting these Supreme Court justices on the bench that are overturning
these cases that are taking away our fundamental rights.
Let's watch a clip of some of those folks trump 2024.
What do you think about that definitely trump What's been going on recently with
the roe v wade getting overturned?
What do you think about that?
I think women should definitely have a right to choose whatever is best for them.
They're taking away women's rights, but you would vote for
donald trump again if I could vote.
Yeah, I would think so.
Did you know that trump actually appointed the three court justices
that overturned roe v wade.
Do you think that contradicts a little bit what you're saying?
Yeah, I am really unsure about who I'd vote for at this point.
Does that change your opinion?
Like on voting for him?
Yeah.
So Trump is like a now maybe is it Trump 2024 now,
are these folks representative of the voting population?
Maybe it's definitely the case that people in the United States cast ballots that
are not in their own self interest and
I'm sure That there are many people who live in the districts of those 195
Republicans that voted against people having access to birth control and
condoms, that vote republican every time and use contraceptives.
And so it's really concerning when we think about what's going to happen in
these midterms.
Okay, so almost all the republicans today voted against a right to contraception.
So we just showed you two thirds of women in child, you know, bearing age use it.
I've seen polls that say 99% of women are in favor of it.
I looked up a poll today that said that about 80% of
women say that it should be free part of health care, so
not just an access to it, but free free access to it.
It's 80% of women and 96% of Republicans in the house said,
no no, you shouldn't have access to it.
You shouldn't have a right to it.
Now, we're gonna make you have as many of our babies as you can bear, or
maybe more than you could bear.
And you have no rights anymore.
You have no rights to your body.
You have nothing.
Okay, Men are back in charge.
And and it's not all men, it's the most despicable right wing men who get off on,
involuntarily controlling women's bodies.
And these are the same people who will tell you that their for freedom and
by freedom, they mean my freedom to oppress you in terms of those voters
Jessica no, I think they're perfectly representative.
So the number one mistake that democrats make in terms of messaging,
there's a lot of mistakes they're making a lot of categories, right?
But in terms of messaging is they all assume that everybody knows what they
know, that ain't remotely true.
And by the way, a lot of people in media also assume that so, I mean,
like everybody knows that the republicans are against abortion, right?
No. Look at those voters, and and
by the way, you'll see it in all the polling, it's not that no one knows.
Of course, people generally know a lot of people know, but does everybody know know,
know giant percentages of the country have no idea the awful, awful policies
that republicans are in favor of and they're not a little in favor of it.
What, what, what the vote was 228- 1,
95, Eight Republicans voted with the Democrats.
Yeah, I guess contraception is okay 195 Republicans voted no.
Okay.
And is that going to be well publicized by the democrats?
So that by the time people go to vote and the and they get into that voting booth,
they're gonna think, well,
I don't want the republicans taking away my contraception.
That's mental.
No, probably not.
Probably democrats will fail at this messaging and
tons of women will accidentally vote to take away their own rights, Right?
I would always say whenever I was knocking doors for the Bernie campaign, and
people would say, how do you knock doors and have conversations with voters or
politics are so hostile in this country and they make a good point.
But they're imagining a political conversation going in the way of
how mainstream media represents the democrats and how,
you know, Fox News represents the republicans, The democrats and
mainstream neoliberal media have really weak talking points.
If you use those talking points, you're going to lose what needs to happen ahead
of the midterms is people having conversations exactly like this?
Do you think women should have access to birth control?
And if the person says, you know, yes, I do.
Okay. Are you aware that 195 Republicans,
including maybe the one that represents them if you're knocking doors in
one of their districts voted against women having access to contraceptives and
people being able to use contraceptives for sex.
How do you how do you feel about that?
That's a really easy conversation.
And then you say, you know,
you can disagree with the Democrats on some issues.
I don't agree with the politician on everything, but you know what, the deal or
the Republicans are voting to take away our fundamental rights and
I really value freedom.
It's it's not a hard conversation to have, but
the democrats are so bad at messaging that it feels like they don't want to win.
And I just know that we're going to see the worst kind of
messaging around this from the democrats where they talk about codifying
roe versus wade instead of saying, we need to guarantee our fundamental rights.
We need to guarantee our right to an abortion.
We need to guarantee our right to birth controls or birth control methods.
It shouldn't be hard, but for some reason it is well,
I'll give you a pretty decent example of it.
It happened in that contraception vote nancy.
Pelosi came up and gave a speech and of course, mainstream media quoted her
saying this is servitude, like as if she was being super tough on them.
No, that was the only tough line in the whole speech.
And if you watch it, she also said, referring to contraception and
all the different rights that the republicans are attacking.
She said this isn't just about abortion.
I understand people's position on that.
I come from a pro life family.
I respect people's views, but this is about more than that in the middle
of a speech about how you have to pass a law protecting contraception rights.
Why are you proudly declaring you come from a pro life family and
making the anti abortion argument for the republicans.
This is the leader, the so called leader of the democrats in the House.
She went on to say today, we'll have a vote on the right to contraception and
we'll see where our republican friends are and I hope that they will be with us.
Well, her hope was not meant 195 of them voted No.
Here's what the leader of the Democrats should say.
Those guys on the other side just took away your most basic freedoms and
they're monsters.
They're not my goddamn friends.
They're voting no on contraception.
They want to control every part of your body.
They are government tyranny.
But no Democratic leader would ever say that and they would whisper and
sweet nothings into the republican friends ears.
And then you wonder why the voters don't know what monsters republicans are.
Because the democrats never tell them.
It's such a good distillation of what's going on in our politics in America
right now.
Because what we have is members of the right republicans,
conservatives descending into fascism.
They're taking away freedoms for
us to not be able to have access to birth control is insane.
They want us to be living in an authoritarian country and
the opposition we have to.
That is nancy.
Pelosi spewing platitudes.
Platitudes are not going to stop the rise of fascism in the United States.
And democrats will keep telling you, you have to vote for us.
You have to vote for us because look at what the republicans are doing also in
the midterms, wherever there is a race where progressive can get into office,
We need to be working like hell to get them into office because we need
a stronger opposition to the right than the democratic leadership that we have now