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Amy Klobuchar Talks Abortion Rates, Contraception 

In the latest edition of “The Candidates Come to Cosmo,” U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said the country’s declining rate of abortions and unintended pregnancies is a “good thing,” and pledged to push for greater contraception access if elected to the White House.

Asked about policies related to contraception, Klobuchar mentioned birth control was part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—also known as Obamacare—”and we have to make sure that it’s accessible and affordable.” Republicans on the federal and state levels, meanwhile, have waged an all-out assault on the ACA‘s birth control benefit that continues a decade after congressional Democrats passed the ACA into law. 

The abortion rate in the United States has dropped precipitously over the past decade, a trend the Guttmacher Institute attributes to a fall in pregnancies and births. The nation’s abortion rate reached an all-time low in 2017.

Klobuchar said expanding access to birth control would be important for parents who don’t want a child after their first.

“And then there’s interesting work going on,” she told Cosmopolitan. “Like, if a young person gets pregnant once and has a baby, there’s a lot of work—and this doesn’t come to your head right away—in making sure they have contraception, so that doesn’t happen again and that they can raise their child or give their child up for adoption but that they have access to contraception. That’s been one of the ways that people have found it really helpful and not just discounting that group.”

Klobuchar said in the interview that codifying Roe v. Wade protections into federal law “is probably the number one thing we could do so that if a court starts to mess around with it, it is in law. I think that’s the most important.”

Some reproductive rights advocates have said codifying Roe, which has widespread support among 2020 Democrats, is not enough to ensure access for people across the socio-economic spectrum.

Elizabeth Warren Has a Plan for Her Inauguration

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has at least part of her outfit picked out for if she takes the presidency in November and gets sworn in on Inauguration Day 2021.

Warren said she had worn a pink Planned Parenthood scarf to other important occasions, including President Trump’s swearing-in. That scarf would be wrapped around her once again if she were to become the 46th president of the United States.

The crowd last week greeted Warren’s proclamation with raucous applause.

Democratic presidential candidates have for months positioned themselves as defenders of abortion rights while the Trump administration attacks reproductive health care and the president appoints judges who could prove critical in gutting the right to abortion care. Planned Parenthood this year was forced out of the Title X family planning program after the administration implemented anti-choice restrictions that weren’t stopped by the courts. Planned Parenthood received around $60 million a year from Title X, according to the New York Times.

That family planning funding—around $286 million—is being funneled to anti-choice organizations that don’t provide a full spectrum of reproductive health care.

What Else We’re Reading

The Center for Popular Democracy Action, a coalition of over 40 progressive community groups of around 600,000 people, this week endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) run for the presidency, the New York Times reported. This comes after the country’s largest nurses’ union endorsed Sanders last month.  

Andrew Yang told NBC News this week that his campaign’s lack of media attention might be due to his Asian American identity. “Race might enter into it in the sense that my candidacy seems very new and different to various media organizations,” Yang said. “I think you can make an argument that it’s somehow intersecting with some other dynamics.”

Former workers at President Trump’s private golf club criticized the president for his anti-immigrant rhetoric during an event Wednesday with Democratic presidential candidates, including former Vice President Joe Biden, according to the Washington Post. The Post spoke with dozens of undocumented people who have worked at Trump’s properties.