When, shortly after in 2022, Democrats tried to aimed at safeguarding access to contraception nationwide, all but eight Republicans opposed it. Now, Senate Democrats are unveiling a to attempt to force a vote on contraceptive protections—and they have some highly visual help: a 20-foot purple inflatable IUD that the reproductive rights group has installed outside of Washington, DC’s Union Station on Wednesday. “Americans for Contraception sponsored a 20-foot IUD in front of Union Station today, in order to call attention to a critical vote in the US Senate on the , a simple bill that would codify the right to condoms, the pill, and IUDs.
More than 90% of Americans support contraception, and this legislation would enshrine the right for providers to prescribe and patients to seek and receive contraception,” the organization told in a statement on Wednesday. Given that former president and current 2024 Republican frontrunner Donald Trump comments about potentially restricting access to birth control, the IUD sculpture—and the political fight for reproductive rights that it represents—feels especially apropos. While President Joe Biden’s administration has been by some for placing insufficient emphasis on reproductive rights, the push for a legal right to contraception (which follows another aimed at expanding access to in vitro fertilization, or ) represents a bold move for US Democrats.
While the bill, formally known as the , seems unlikely to make it to Biden’.
