“Ted Cruz tried to ban contraception” five times.
— Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, December 1st, 2015 in a post on her campaign website
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called out Republican rival Ted Cruz for a contradiction on contraception after Cruz made a widely aired comment about condoms on his college campus.
It started when Cruz mocked a consistent charge from Democrats that Republicans are against birth control during a Nov. 30, 2015, campaign stop in Bettendorf, Iowa.
“Last I checked,” Cruz said, “we don’t have a rubber shortage in America. Look, when I was in college, we had a machine in the bathroom, you put 50 cents in and voila. So, yes, anyone who wants contraceptives can access them, but it’s an utter made-up nonsense issue.”
The Clinton campaign didn’t think much of his comment, challenging Cruz with a post on its website headlined, “Ted Cruz says no one’s trying to ban contraception. Here are 5 times Ted Cruz tried to ban contraception.” It added, “Cruz has personally tried to make it harder for women to get birth control.”
None of the Clinton campaign’s examples supports the idea that Cruz seeks a flat-out ban on contraception.
The Clinton campaign took issue with our characterization of the post, saying that they never meant for the headline to say that Cruz tried to ban all contraceptives on five separate occasions. However, we think ours is the most obvious interpretation of the language in question.
1. “The time he supported a so-called personhood amendment, which could criminalize abortion and could ban some forms of birth control.”
This example offers the most support for Cruz trying to ban contraception, but it still overreaches.
Cruz signed a “personhood affirmation” circulated by Georgia Right to Life this summer that commits him to a “human life amendment” to the U.S. Constitution that would define life as beginning at fertilization. As we have noted, the impact of such proposed “personhood” amendments on birth control is in dispute.
Opponents, along with some legal scholars and medical organizations, say that giving a fertilized egg all the rights of a person could make several FDA-approved contraceptives illegal. But that would depend on how courts interpret personhood. A “personhood” provision has not yet passed at the federal or state level.
2. “The time he was willing to shut down the government to cut funding from Planned Parenthood.”
Cruz was indeed willing to shut down the federal government if lawmakers and President Barack Obama maintained federal funding of Planned Parenthood. (Combined, state and federal funding accounts for about 41 percent of Planned Parenthood’s yearly revenue, or about $528 million, according to the group’s most recent annual report.)
But even if this shutdown had happened — and it didn’t — the result would have been more indirect than an attempted ban on contraception.
3. “The time he called for the Supreme Court to turn women’s personal health decisions over to their employers by striking down the Obamacare birth control co-pay provision” in the Hobby Lobby ruling.
Cruz’s support for the Hobby Lobby decision does not by itself mean that he supports banning all contraceptives.
First, the case involved employer co-payments for contraceptives, making it financially harder but not impossible for an individual to obtain contraceptives. And second, that case involved only four of the 20 FDA-approved contraceptives; whether the Supreme Court might some day support a broader interpretation that permits closely held companies to opt out of all contraceptives remains to be seen.
4. “The time he tried to get rid of a law that made it so women couldn’t be fired for their personal reproductive decisions (including birth control).”
The Washington, D.C., law in question — the Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Amendment Act of 2014 — says employers cannot use their personal beliefs to discriminate against an employee for his or her reproductive health choices.
Cruz took issue with the law in his capacity as a member of Congress, which is allowed a 30-day period to object to D.C. laws.
The potential to be fired or demoted from a job for using contraception is a heavy penalty. Still, opposing this bill is not the same thing as advocating for a ban on contraception.
5. “And the time he used a medically and scientifically incorrect argument to try to ban emergency contraception.”
The Clinton campaign cites an article in the liberal publication Salon.com that takes Cruz to task for saying that the federal government wants to make private companies (like those in the Hobby Lobby case) provide “abortifacients” to employees. The article draws a distinction between abortifacients, such as the pill RU-486, and “emergency contraceptives” that may be taken up to three days after unprotected sex.
It’s not clear that this example supports Clinton’s overall point that Cruz has sought to “ban contraception.”
Our ruling
The post on Clinton’s website claims “Ted Cruz tried to ban contraception” five times.
There’s little doubt that Cruz is a strong opponent of abortion. But the Clinton campaign’s examples don’t exactly show Cruz trying to push across-the-board bans on contraception.
The strongest conclusion about Cruz’s views that one could draw from these examples is that he might support a ban on certain types of contraception (but not all) through his support for a personhood amendment. The other examples are even more limited and deal with what employers would be required to pay for, for instance, or whether a major birth control provider should continue to receive federal funding.
We rate Clinton’s statement Mostly False.
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