Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Follow Us:
Top Stories

Do about 90 percent of Americans support access to contraception?

People at a press conference. One has a sign that reads "Contraception is health care."

Supporters hold signs as Sen. Tammy Duckworth speaks during a news conference on the Right to Contraception Act in D.C. on June 5.

Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

This fact brief was originally published by Wisconsin Watch. Read the original here. Fact briefs are published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network, and republished by The Fulcrum. Visit Gigafact to learn more.

Do about 90 percent of Americans support access to contraception?

Yes.

Some 91 percent of registered voters said in a national poll released June 11, 2024, that birth control should be legal (73 percent said they feel strongly, 18 percent said somewhat strongly).


When the question was asked about contraception, support was 84 (percent 69 percent strongly, 15 percent somewhat).

Liberal pollster Navigator did the poll, but other surveys found similar results.

The nonpartisan Pew Research Center reported June 6 that 79 percent of registered voters said widespread access to birth control is good for society.

Gallup reported in June 2023 that 88 percent of Americans said birth control is morally acceptable.

In a 2022 FiveThirtyEight poll, about 90 percent of Americans said condoms and birth control pills should be legal in all or most cases, and 81 percent said the same of intrauterine devices.

The 90 percent claim was made in a June 5 interview by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.). She is running for re-election in November against Republican Eric Hovde.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

Navigator Abortion and Contraception: A Guide for Advocates

Pew Research Center Gender, family, reproductive issues and the 2024 election

Gallup Fewer in U.S. Say Same-Sex Relations Morally Acceptable

FiveThirtyEight How Americans Feel About Abortion And Contraception

MSNBC 'Trump's friends just blocked the right to contraception': Dems torch GOP over Senate vote


Read More

From Colombia to Connecticut: The urgent need to end FGM in the Americas

Journalists gather in front of the Connecticut State Capitol Building during a press conference on SB259 and an anti-FGM art installation

Bryna Subherwal, Equality Now

From Colombia to Connecticut: The urgent need to end FGM in the Americas

Across the Americas, hundreds of thousands of women and girls are living with or have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM). These affected populations are citizens and residents of countries where protections are incomplete, entirely focused on criminalisation, inconsistently enforced, or entirely absent.

FGM is not a “foreign” issue. It is a human rights violation unfolding within national borders, one that all governments in the Americas have the legal and moral responsibility to address.

Keep ReadingShow less
Senate Committee advances bill banning AI companions for children

Sen. Josh Hawley addresses the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary during a debate over the AI chatbot regulation bill he introduced in October, known as the GUARD Act. April 30, 2026.

Wisdom Howell // Medill News Service.

Senate Committee advances bill banning AI companions for children

WASHINGTON—A bipartisan bill that would ban minors from using AI companions, require all chatbots to verify a user’s age, and allow AI companies to be prosecuted for harming children was unanimously advanced to the Senate floor Wednesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. introduced “the Guidelines for User Age-verification and Responsible Dialogue Act,” (GUARD Act) in October as the Senate’s response to the rise in cases of children being groomed and driven to commit suicide by chatbots designed to replicate human interactions known as AI companions.

Keep ReadingShow less
House Democrats and Republicans Clash over Free Speech in Higher Education

Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, addresses the chamber in front of a portrait of George Miller.

(Matthew Junkroski / MEDILL)

House Democrats and Republicans Clash over Free Speech in Higher Education

WASHINGTON — Witnesses and representatives sat in silence as Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, spoke about how universities should strive for intellectual diversity and introduce controversial ideas. Rep. Alma S. Adams, D-N.C., agreed with his rhetoric, but went on to criticize her Republican colleagues for standing in the way of free expression.

“Unfortunately, what we often see, especially in hearings like this, is not a good faith effort to strike that balance, but a selective narrative,” Adams said. “My colleagues on the other side of the aisle frequently claim that there’s a free speech crisis on college campuses, arguing that universities lack viewpoint diversity and silence certain perspectives.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Republican Attacks on Citizen Ballot Measures Undermine Democracy

Election workers process ballots at the Orange County Registrar of Voters one week after Election Day on November 12, 2024 in Santa Ana, California.

Getty Images, Mario Tama

Republican Attacks on Citizen Ballot Measures Undermine Democracy

In October 2020, Utah’s Republican Senator Mike Lee delivered a startling but revealing civics lesson in the aftermath of that year’s vice-presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence. He tweeted, The United States is “not a democracy.”

“The word ‘democracy,’’’ Lee wrote, “appears nowhere in the Constitution, perhaps because our form of government is not a democracy. It’s a constitutional republic….Democracy isn’t the objective….” The senator said that the object of the Constitution was to promote “liberty, peace, and prospefity (sic).”

Keep ReadingShow less