Contraception is a game-changer for women and people with the capacity for pregnancy. Access to birth control has given people the opportunity to continue their education, hold down a job, plan their future, and challenge the status quo. When considering that 99 percent of women have used contraception at some point in their lives, it’s not controversial.
Despite the universal nature of birth control, relentless attacks have become a fixture of Missouri Republicans’ out-of-touch agenda. In their latest salvo, Senate Republicans attached an amendment to SB 1 that would ban the use of Medicaid dollars for contraception, defying federal law requiring coverage. Republicans are not only jeopardizing coverage for 50,000 Missourians who currently rely on Medicaid for birth control, but they’re also risking funding for the state’s entire Medicaid program — all because they don’t believe people of low-income deserve access to essential reproductive health care.
As a social worker focused on reproductive health, I see how personal health care decisions are hijacked by extremist politicians. As a result, Missourians are being stripped of their bodily autonomy, including their ability to plan their futures. And Missouri physicians are being discredited of their expertise and forced to jump through barriers to provide basic reproductive health care.
I have listened as patients express their frustrations and anger in learning that their health care decisions are restricted as a result of unjust, ideological policies. I have felt the mixed heartache and joy of a mother learning that she has another child on the way while she is already struggling to feed, care, and house her current children on minimum wage. Without access to birth control, Missourians are being denied an equal standing in society as they can no longer decide if and when they want to become parents or grow their family.
This reckless and heartless decision pulls back the curtain on what attacks on birth control are really about: power and control. And the fact that decimating Medicaid will disproportionately affect Black people and other people of color, LGBTQ+ and young folks, shows Republicans are more than willing to trade in racism and misogyny to maintain their power.
The white, male legislators leading this attack — Sens. Paul Wieland and Bob Onder — who argue so loudly that they want to gut abortion are now working overtime to ban people of low income from access to contraception. As a board member of NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, I’ve witnessed these ideological attacks firsthand. In 2016, Wieland fought to remove birth control coverage from his own insurance plan because he finds contraception “morally offensive.”
In no surprise, these lawmakers are the same ones who have rejected decades’ worth of federal dollars for Medicaid and are now refusing to fund voter-approved expansion to 275,000 eligible Missourians. Republicans are knowingly threatening the health care of thousands of Missourians, the lives of their own constituents, to advance their own ideological agenda of power and control.
But for Missourians, this isn’t some ideological debate. Real lives, futures, and families are at stake. For all the anger and pain I have witnessed as a social worker, I have also seen the feeling of hope and empowerment that overcomes folks when they are able to take control of their future, by deciding what is best for them.
Access to birth control is essential health care. No matter how much money you have, where you live, or the color of your skin, everybody deserves access to birth control that works best for them, so they can control their own futures. No one should have the power to deny Missourians the health care we deserve — including politicians.
Lauren Nacke is the NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri board president and a social worker who focuses on reproductive health care.
