For months, Alaskans have seen ads stating U.S. Senate hopeful Kelly Tshibaka told a crowd she would ban birth control, and that she views birth control bills as similar to emergency contraception. Tshibaka has said these are wrong and misleading.
With abortion access being one of the biggest drivers for voter turnout, the real issue is how would Tshibaka vote on things like banning or criminalizing abortion or routine contraception. What insight can be gained from her comments?
On October 5th, Factcheck.org published a post asserting that ads by pro-Murkowski SuperPAC attacking GOP candidate for U.S. Senate Kelly Tshibaka’s position on birth control pills distorted Tshibaka’s record. Their evidence? A video taken during a March 12 Republican campaign event. In true Alaska right-wing echo chamber fashion, Factcheck.org’s claim was quickly picked up and amplified by anti-abortion bloggers such as Must Read Alaska and the Alaska Watchman.
But are these ads really distorted, or did Factcheck.org get it wrong (as they sometimes do)?
To be clear, Tshibaka is talking about emergency contraception pills, commonly known as the “Morning-After Pill or “Plan B.” She states in the early portion of the video “I would want to make it illegal to send those pills at all, so you can’t order those pills. And I know from my time working at Postal Service (sic) that we can actually stop sending those pills through the mail.”
What the fact check fails to fully consider are the implications of Kelly Tshibaka placing ordinary birth control in the same category as the emergency contraception pills that she had just discussed banning, while answering an audience question later in the video. Here is that conversation:
Man: “Does birth control fall under that same category, kind of thing?”
Tshibaka: “Um well, it would”
Man: “Yeah?”
Tshibaka: “Yep. Because, some people who aren’t read up on this.
All birth control [unintelligible] act as abortifacients. That is the third step in the birth control process.”
Although we can only speculate what the unintelligible word in that video is, clues can be gathered by researching the final statement in the video, what Tshibaka refers to as the “third step of the birth control process.”
Anti-abortion publications like Human Life International explain “The third mode of action of the birth control pill is abortifacient… In a cycle where ovulation was not prevented and fertilization takes place, the pill causes a ‘silent abortion.’”
It is further the position of this publication that “all birth control pills and the other hormone-based methods of birth control on the market today function as abortifacients part of the time. The Pill often ends early pregnancies by preventing implantation of an already fertilized egg, or very early human being.”
Given the context of her words, it seems clear that Tshibaka was equating all birth control pills with so-called “abortifacients,” a term commonly used by anti-abortion activists to, well, muddy up the waters in conversations about contraception and abortion.
Whether Tshibaka would go so far as to try to restrict them is not clear, but her statements made in the relative privacy of a small Republican gathering suggest that it’s not out of the question. Even under the most lenient interpretation of her comments, Tshibaka’s stance is far more extreme than that of Sen. Lisa Murkowski or Democratic challenger Pat Chesbro.
On July 8, Tshibaka posted a video walking back her views and followed up with an Anchorage Daily News op-ed where she claimed it was “outrageous” to think she would limit birth control by mail.
This fits with a pattern we are seeing in the midterm election cycle. Nationwide, MAGA Republican candidates are changing their more extreme public stances on abortion, which are well out of step with Alaskans and the nation.
While candidates like Tshibaka and others are busy scrubbing their more extreme views from their websites, social media posts, or previous campaign materials, Republican-controlled states are passing extreme laws limiting women’s reproductive choices, frequently criminalizing women or doctors seeking or performing abortions at any stage of pregnancy. As a result of these laws, women are facing prosecution for seeking abortion care, and denied necessary treatment for cancer, lupis, and rheumatoid arthritis, among other health issues.
There is some uncertainty as to what specific pills Tshibaka was referring to. There is no ambiguity in her overall extreme views.
Candidates may be reframing their views in light of looming elections, but Republicans who aren’t running for office are actively looking to criminalize abortion in conservative states around the country. Let’s not be fooled by candidates walking back their extreme views. After all, we were told that Roe v. Wade was the law of the land for a long time, which was true, until it wasn’t.
