Sen. Joni Ernst Blocks The Right to Contraception Act In The Senate

The hog castrator to the world, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), has blocked the House bill to protect women’s access to birth control in the anti-democratic dysfunctional Senate.

Huffington Post reports, GOP Sen. Joni Ernst Blocks Bill Protecting Right To Birth Control:

Democratic legislation that would protect the right to birth control and other contraceptives was blocked by Senate Republicans on Wednesday, a little more than a month after the Supreme Court reversed nearly 50 years of precedent and overturned abortion rights.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) objected to a request to pass the bill via unanimous consent. If any senator opposes such a request on the Senate floor, it is rejected.

No, it simply means that the bill must go through regular order, rather than be fastracked with a floor vote for unanimous consent. Ernst is trying to run out the clock on the Senate’s legislative calendar.

Ernst claimed the Democrats’ bill “purposefully goes far beyond the scope of contraception” and said it could fund abortion providers and protect abortion-inducing drugs.

Anti-abortion extremists’ next target is blocking women’s access to contraception.

The House passed the Right to Contraception Act last week amid fears that the high court may come for reproductive health care next. Democrats pointed to an opinion from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggesting the court should reexamine precedent that guaranteed the right to contraception.

The legislation would create a statutory right for people to obtain and use contraceptives, as well as codifying protections for physicians who provide them.

In the House, 195 Republicans opposed the measure.

Ernst on Wednesday sought to pass her own bill that would expedite over-the-counter access to birth control. Democrats objected, saying her bill wouldn’t prevent states from restricting or even banning access to birth control.

“Her bill would not ensure access to birth control, and it fails to codify the constitutional right to birth control across the United States,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said.

The right to buy and use contraceptives is currently protected by the 1965 landmark Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut.

But Republicans who downplayed the threat to the 1973 abortion decision before the Supreme Court struck it down are similarly dismissing the threat to other rights, like contraception and same-sex marriage.

“Oh, it will never happen” … until it did. These people cannot be believed or trusted.

Some state legislatures have introduced bills to restrict access to contraceptives, though they have not passed.

It’s unclear whether the bill protecting contraception will get a vote on the Senate floor amid the busy calendar, with many other competing priorities on the Democrats’ agenda.

A bill protecting same-sex marriages has picked up steam in the Senate with several GOP endorsements, but it doesn’t yet have enough GOP votes to break a filibuster, according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

UPDATE: The mythical moderate from Maine, Wendy Whiner er Susan Collins, says “Hold on, not so fast!” Republicans care more about serving their corporate masters and preserving corporate tax breaks.

Huffington Post reports, Susan Collins: Democrats’ Climate Deal May Doom Bipartisan Efforts On Same-Sex Marriage:

Sen. Susan Collins, one of a handful of GOP senators working to garner support in her party for a bill to codify gay marriage, the Respect For Marriage Act, said the Democrats’ surprise embrace of a tax and climate change bill made her job much harder.

“I just think the timing could not have been worse and it came totally out of the blue,” the Maine senator told HuffPost Thursday about Senate Democrats’ unveiling of their bill to raise taxes on some companies, boost IRS enforcement and spend the resulting money to fund anti-climate change efforts.

If you are asking yourself, “WTF does any of this have to do with the Respect For Marriage Act?,” you are not alone. It has nothing to do with marriage rights. This is Republican obstruction and retaliation for the only thing these lickspittle lackeys truly care about: corporate taxes, in service to their corporate masters.

The news that West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) had arrived at an agreement broke like a thunderclap over official Washington early Wednesday night. The bill still faces hurdles, including ensuring all Senate Democrats are on board and will be available to vote on it when it comes to the floor. [Lookin’ at you Kyrsten Sinema.]  But if Democrats pull it off, it could be a big political victory for the party and the White House.

Still, Collins warned that the manner in which that victory was secured, where it appeared Democrats kept Manchin and Schumer’s negotiations under wraps until a separate bipartisan computer chip production incentive bill was passed by the Senate, hurt the effort to gather support among Republicans to bring the gay marriage bill to the floor.

“After we just had worked together successfully on gun safety legislation, on the CHIPs bill, it was a very unfortunate move that destroys the many bipartisan efforts that are under way,” she said.

Reminder: Democrats are pursuing the budget reconciliation process only because of the “Grim Reaper of Democracy,” Mitch McConnell and his policy of total obstruction, especially on budgetary matters. There never was and will never be any mythical bipartisanship on the budget appropriations bills. In contact law there is a concept known as “preexisting breach.” Republicans breached bipartisanship on day one of this Congress, so the late in the game Schumer-Manchin Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, reached without Republicans who would only have sabotaged the bill, cannot be a breach of bipartisanship because it has already beem breached. Bipartisanship is not a law or even a Senate rule. Republicans passed their 2017 tax cut for corporations and plutocrats by the budget reconcilation process without any Democratic input or votes, so STFU.

While Republicans had been expected to filibuster the bill in the Senate, the support of four GOP senators — Collins, Ohio’s Rob Portman, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis — raised the prospect 10 Republicans might be able to be brought along. [Riiight.]That, along with all 50 Democratic votes, would break a filibuster and allow the bill to be passed and sent to President Joe Biden for his signature.

You know what else would break the filibuster? If Sens. “Manchinema” drop their unprincipled support for the archaic anti-democratic Senate filibuster rule and support a carve-out for protecting fundamental constitutional rights from an activist radical Republican Supreme Court. They could do it today, and move these House bills next week.

[W]ith time dwindling for the Senate before they leave for the August recess and a new, concerted lobbying effort by conservative organizations, any Senate consideration looks likely to be pushed into the fall campaign season at best.

Asked if she thought the bill would have to wait now until the fall, Collins said, “I don’t know and I’m going to continue to work for support for the bill.”

She will never find more than the four Republicans she has, and she may no longer have them.