Mariannette Miller-Meeks is working overtime to cover up her dangerous anti-choice record in Congress by touting an “essentially meaningless” bill she claims expands access to contraception. The truth? It’s “not clear” what impact the bill will have, other than providing a convenient talking point for Miller-Meeks.
Reminder: Miller-Meeks co-sponsored legislation banning abortion with no exceptions and risking contraception access, and even voted against a bill protecting access to contraception.
DCCC Spokesperson Mallory Payne:
“Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ extreme anti-abortion record is hurting Iowa women – and she won’t be able to cover that up with bogus talking points.”
She had barely opened her town hall to questions when Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a Republican from a competitive district in Iowa, was pressed to defend her opposition to abortion rights.
“One of the main functions of the federal government is to protect life,” Ms. Miller-Meeks, who won election in 2020 by just six votes, told a sparse crowd this month in Iowa City, a younger, more progressive part of her district where she rarely campaigns.
Ms. Miller-Meeks then quickly pivoted to politically safer terrain, telling her constituents about how she had also sponsored legislation aimed at expanding access to contraception.
It is an increasingly common strategy among vulnerable House Republicans — especially those in politically competitive districts — who are trying to reconcile their party’s hard-line anti-abortion policies with the views of voters in their districts, particularly independents and women.
Just ahead of lawmakers’ long summer break, Ms. Miller-Meeks was part of a group of House Republican women who introduced the Orally Taken Contraception Act of 2023, a bill that they pitched as a way to expand access to contraception and that she called “a significant step forward for health care.”
Abortion rights advocates argue that the legislation is essentially meaningless and merely an effort by Republican lawmakers to mislead voters about their positions on women’s health. But for the G.O.P. women who are backing it, the bill offers an elegant way to shift the conversation away from the divisive issue of abortion.
The contraception bill introduced in July, co-sponsored by at least eight Republican women and endorsed by the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, would direct the Food and Drug Administration to issue guidance for companies that want to make oral contraception available without prescriptions. But it is not clear what practical effect it would have.
Only two drug companies are actively working to offer birth control over the counter. One of them, Opill, was already approved for sale without a prescription before the legislation was introduced. The other, Cadence Health, is years into the application process with the F.D.A. and does not need the guidance that the bill directs the agency to issue.
Abortion rights groups have dismissed the bill as a stunt aimed at masking Republicans’ drive to crack down on both abortion and contraceptive access.
Ms. Miller-Meeks, along with other co-sponsors including Representative Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma, have opposed Democratic-led efforts to safeguard access to birth control. They voted last year with the vast majority of House Republicans to oppose legislation to ensure access to contraception nationwide, a right that was regarded as newly under threat after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The situation has left Ms. Miller-Meeks in a precarious position. Democrats hope that flipping her seat will be part of their path to winning back the House majority in 2024. Earlier this month, Christina Bohannan, a former state lawmaker who lost to Ms. Miller-Meeks in 2022, announced she would run for the seat again. She immediately raised $276,000, more than any other congressional candidate in Iowa had raised in their first 24 hours.
Ms. Bohannan plans to make abortion rights central to her campaign to unseat Ms. Miller-Meeks.
“About 61 percent of Iowans support the right to abortion in all or most cases,” [Bohannan] said in an interview. “Representative Miller-Meeks has aligned herself with the most extreme members of her party instead of the people of Iowa on this issue, proposing one abortion ban over another.”
Ms. Bohannan dismissed the contraception bill as a “purely political” text that was drafted “to provide political cover for her own record.”
