Democrats in Washington are setting off on their latest messaging push on reproductive rights, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., taking steps to set up a vote on a bill that calls for restoring Roe v. Wade.

It comes as Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra is heading off on a multi-day tour to bring attention to the issue in states around the country, just days ahead of the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that overturned the constitutional right to an abortion -- and less than six months away from the 2024 election. 

What You Need To Know

  • Democrats in Washington are setting off on their latest messaging push on reproductive rights, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., taking steps to set up a vote on a bill that calls for restoring Roe v. Wade
  • It comes as Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra is heading off on a multi-day tour to bring attention to the issue in states around the country, just days ahead of the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that overturned the constitutional right to an abortion 
  • Over the last two weeks, Republicans in the upper chamber blocked two bills pertaining to different aspects of reproductive healthcare: contraception and in-vitro fertilization; Republicans in the upper chamber had tried to pass their own bill seeking to protect access to IVF 
  • Democrats have sought to put a spotlight on the issue of reproductive health since Roe’s overturning – which enabled abortion restrictions or bans to take effect in states around the country – as the topic has repeatedly proved electorally fruitful for the party 

Speaking on the Senate floor on Monday, Schumer announced that he had taken the first procedural step to bring up the Reproductive Freedom for Women Act, which the Democratic leader said would affirm a woman’s “fundamental right to choose” and calls for Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed the right to an abortion, to be restored on the federal level. 

The move marks Schumer’s latest election-year attempt to put Republicans on the record on reproductive rights, a topic in which Democrats believe their stance on more closely aligns with public opinion and one in which they believe is a winning issue for them at the ballot box. 

Over the last two weeks, Republicans in the upper chamber blocked two bills pertaining to different aspects of reproductive healthcare that Schumer brought up for a vote. One would have guaranteed a right to contraception under federal law while the other sought to protect access to in vitro fertilization after the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision that embryos can be considered children earlier this year set off concerns about the future of IVF and brought widespread attention to the issue. 

“So many Senate Republicans and so many House Republicans will try to talk like moderates on reproductive freedoms, but their own record is irrefutably against them,” Schumer argued on the Senate floor on Monday. “And when it comes time to vote, they vote against women and reproductive freedoms, over and over again.”

Two Republican senators, Ted Cruz of Texas and Katie Britt of Alabama, introduced their own legislation seeking to protect IVF on the federal level but that bill also failed to move forward on the floor. 

“Sadly, they aren’t interested in a bill to actually protect IVF access and figuring out how we could get that to become law,” Britt said at the time on the floor about her Democratic colleagues. “That wouldn’t advance their true goal – which is about partisan electoral politics.”

The announcement of Schumer’s next move on the reproductive rights front coincides with the start of Becerra’s tour, which will see him travel to six states to speak about abortion care, IVF and contraception. 

The secretary will be joined by medical professionals, patients and other elected officials on his stops on the road and was joined by five female Democratic senators – Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith of Minnesota, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Laphonza Butler of California – in Washington on Tuesday to kickoff the tour with a press conference. 

“This tour we hope will highlight that there is someone who is on your side, there is someone who is going to stand up for you,” Becerra said on Tuesday. 

Democrats have sought to put a spotlight on the issue of reproductive health since Roe’s overturning – which enabled abortion restrictions or bans to take effect in states around the country – as the topic has repeatedly proved electorally fruitful for the party. 

Polls show most Americans do not support very restrictive laws on the procedure and Democrats credit the issue, in part, with a stronger-than-expected showing in the 2022 congressional midterm elections.

Since Roe’s reversal, when the issue has appeared on the ballot in a number of states — even ruby red ones like Kansas and Ohio — voters have chosen to keep abortion more widely accessible. 

Democrats and President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign has forcefully sought to blame former President Donald Trump – who picked three of the justices on the high court who voted to overturn Roe – for the restrictions and bans that are now in effect across the country. 

Monday, June 24, marks two years since the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe. 

This session, the Supreme Court took up two high profile reproduction related cases. Last week, it ruled that a medication called mifepristone, used in the majority of abortion in the U.S., would remain accessible because those who were suing in opposition lacked the legal right to do so. The high court has yet to release its decision on whether Idaho’s near-total abortion ban violates a federal law requiring Medicare-participating hospitals to provide emergency care – including abortion care.