Nancy Pelosi Lashes Out at Republicans Over Contraception Bill: ‘This Is About Servitude’

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi lit into Republicans over their opposition to a bill protecting access to contraception, saying “This is about servitude.”

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas threw the right to contraception into doubt with his concurring opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization,  in which he said the court should “reconsider” rights in other cases, and cited Griswold v. Connecticut (1965, right of married persons to obtain contraceptives), among others.

On Thursday, the House of Representatives debated and voted on  H.R. 8373, a bill to “protect a person’s ability to access contraceptives and to engage in contraception, and to protect a health care provider’s ability to provide contraceptives, contraception, and information related to contraception.”

During the debate period, Speaker Pelosi gave a floor speech in which she voiced strong support for the bill, and ripped her Republican colleagues for opposing it:

Let us be clear: those that oppose this legislation are only revealing their dark desire to punish and control America’s most intimate and personal decisions.

Madam Speaker, those of us who have served here for a while can tell you that House Republicans have been against contraception for decades. I couldn’t even get our colleagues to vote for natural family planning when the Catholic Church came to us and said, ‘We need a correction in the law so funds for natural family planning can go forth.’ Republican colleagues said, ‘Let us be clear: we are against family planning, domestically or globally – or internationally.’ We had one Republican vote with us and were able to pass the legislation – as requested by the Catholic Church.

What is this about? They are against birth control, but they are for controlling women. This is about servitude. This is about servitude. You couldn’t convince people. I would say to people, ‘This isn’t just about abortion.’ I understand people’s position on that. I come from a pro-life family. I respect people’s views. But this is about more than that. This is about contraception, birth control, family planning. But now it’s clear.

Today, we’ll have a vote [on] the right to contraception, and we’ll see where our Republican friends are. And I hope they will be with us. We don’t put this bill forth to put you on the spot. We put this forth to put women in control of their situation.

I ask those who oppose contraception, again, do you even know what’s going on in your own families? Why don’t you ask? Do we need a session of the birds and bees to talk about why this is important? What’s going on here? Is the blind desire to have women controlled and in servitude such that they don’t even want to know the truth about family planning and contraception?

Pelosi again invited Republicans to vote for the bill, but in the end, only eight of them did so. The measure passed 228 to 195.

Watch above via C-SPAN.

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