Tim Steller's column: Contraception tied to abortion debate

Of course a candidate wouldn’t campaign on banning contraception.

That would be crazy — way out of the mainstream.

Right?

Well, maybe yes and maybe no. And maybe now — after the leak of a proposed Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade — it’s past time to consider some of the ramifications of the court’s potential abortion ruling. It’s not just about recent decisions such as the legalization of gay marriage.

The idea that U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters, a Tucson Republican, supports banning contraception emerged Friday in a story in the Arizona Mirror. Reporter Dillon Rosenblatt noted that on his website, Masters said that not just Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey — the main abortion-rights cases — should be overturned, but Griswold v. Connecticut should be too.

Griswold is the 1965 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that concluded a constitutional right of privacy exists and prevents the government from interfering in a married couple’s decision whether to use contraception. Griswold and a subsequent ruling prohibited states from banning contraception and also prepared the ground for the Roe v. Wade decision eight years later.

“GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters wants to allow states to ban contraception use,” was the headline on the May 7 Arizona Mirror story. Days later, the word circulated on social media that Masters wants to ban condoms — not true, of course.

Masters lashed out after the Mirror story was initially published, calling it unethical, because the attempts to reach his campaign were inadequate, and wrong.

In an email to me Tuesday, he said, “I do not support banning contraception at any level, whether local, state or federal.”

Explaining his point of view about the Griswold case on Twitter Saturday, he said: “In Griswold, the justices wholesale *made up a constitutional right* to achieve a political outcome. I am opposed to judges making law. It’s the job of the legislative branch to create laws, not the courts.”

A realistic chance

It would be easy to let this debate rest there — especially since Masters had a lawyer send a letter on Sunday threatening to sue the Arizona Mirror for defamation. But the debate really doesn’t end there, in part because contraception ends up being part of the abortion debate, and in part because people having children itself is an issue Masters has raised in his campaign.

Also, it matters because Masters has a realistic chance to be the candidate to face Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly in this year’s general election. At present, most polls are placing Masters in third place, behind Jim Lamon and Attorney General Mark Brnovich.

A Trafalgar Group poll of 1,064 likely Arizona voters taken in late April shows Jim Lamon receiving 24.8% support, Brnovich with 23.9% support and Masters with 19.4% support. The margin of error was 2.99%.

So people shouldn’t write Masters off. Although just 35 and possessing little political experience, he is the chosen candidate of his former boss, billionaire Peter Thiel, who established a political action committee that supports Masters. And a candidate similarly related to Thiel, author J.D. Vance, just won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Ohio after being behind in the polls for months.

Vance won the coveted Trump endorsement, which may have put him over the top in Ohio and could also be the deciding factor in Arizona’s GOP primary.

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Opposition to Roe v. Wade doesn’t distinguish any of the candidates from each other. But when I called around asking the campaigns about their positions on Griswold, I got nothing specific to that case.

The overlap between abortion-rights cases and contraception happens around methods such as intra-uterine devices and morning-after pills. Some anti-abortion-rights activists consider these to be “abortifacients,” meaning that they stop a potential human life by preventing a fertilized egg from being implanted in the uterine wall.

So in some states with a legislative majority wanting to end abortion, Plan B or “morning-after” pills could be banned, and so could IUDs, depending on the wording of the law and its interpretation. The debate over whether an abortion ban also bans these forms of contraception is happening now in Louisiana’s legislature.

So, Roe v. Wade and Griswold are like two layers of protection for these methods of contraception.

More kids younger

In Masters’ campaign, he has also made central the idea of child-rearing and traditional families. He’s featured his kids in his campaign videos and social-media posts, he’s discussed his wife’s home-schooling of the children and he’s extolled the idea that families should be able to survive economically on a single income, though he has not stated that the man should be that breadwinner.

“The developed world’s fertility crisis isn’t just about childlessness (though that is a problem),” he said in an August 2021 tweet. “People aren’t having as many kids as they want, they’re unable to conceive as late as they’ve been told they can, etc.”

“The left (and modernity itself) really does promote an anti-family culture, where young adults are taught to hesitate to start families because they see the birth of a child as the death of their perpetual adolescence,” he went on to write.

(Vance has hit the same point but been more vicious, complaining that the country is being run by "childless cat ladies.")

So while Masters would oppose a contraception ban, the revocation of Griswold and potential limitation of contraception methods would also tend to support his vision for a society where married adults have children younger and stem the fertility crisis.

“I believe it’s important for our society to continue to exist, and for us to pass our culture and our values on to future generations,” he said in Tuesday’s email. He went on, “And there are a number of reasons having children early is preferable for adults, not the least of which is a lot of adults struggle with infertility as they get older.”

When I asked if he would support extending the advanced child tax credit payments that parents of minor children received during the pandemic, he said yes — with an interesting condition.

“Yes, I would absolutely support expanded child tax credits for married couples who want to have children.”

Catch that? He said “for married couples.” The children of unmarried adults would apparently lose out.

So I take Masters at his word that he doesn’t want to ban contraception, definitely not condoms. But if the Supreme Court were to roll back Roe v. Wade and Griswold v. Connecticut, the consequences could be unpredictable and the ramifications even further reaching than we usually think.