Dumb GOP Senate Candidate Says Plan B Is Used for Abortion

The end of Roe v. Wade marked the beginning of a lot of awful things, not the least of which include abortion bans, but also include attacks on the full range of reproductive care including contraception. On Wednesday, in footage obtained by Heartland Signal, Eric Hovde—a businessman with deep roots in California and the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin as of Tuesday—gave a series of chilling and befuddling remarks about Plan B. During a luncheon hosted by the media outlet WisPolitics for voters to get to know him, Hovde seemingly equated emergency contraception with abortion pills, and compared the dissemination of Plan B pills to “hard narcotics” and drug trafficking—things that are all… entirely different from each other!

“The vast majority of abortions today are done through the day-after pill,” Hovde told the WisPolitics reporter moderating the event at the Madison Club. First: No, they’re not. The “day-after” pill is a contraceptive, not an abortifacient. It’s pretty infuriating that the people legislating—or running to legislate—this issue continue to know nothing about it. Plan B prevents a pregnancy—abortion pills end a pregnancy that’s underway.

The reporter then asks Hovde, “So, you’re OK with the preservation of, the use of the pill?” and Hovde offers a real head-scratcher of a response.

“Well, look, you’re not changing that,” he begins. “We can all talk in theory, let’s just talk in reality, you’re not changing that. That pill will be around, just like hard narcotics transfer from state to state or from other countries into our countries, medications move all over our country, and that’s just reality.”

Hovde, who won his primary on Tuesday, is running to unseat Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), a vocal supporter of abortion rights who’s handily won her last two Senate races. He’s been endorsed by Donald Trump and, according to polling from the end of June, he’s currently trailing Baldwin by just five points. Hovde, who reentered politics after unsuccessfully running for the Senate in 2012, launched his campaign in February, attacking Democrats on the border and economy because he doesn’t “recognize what’s happening”—well, of course not; he doesn’t even recognize plan B from abortion.

Hovde’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment to clarify his position on restricting contraceptives. But, stumbling through his words at the luncheon, Hovde seemed to suggest that Plan B shouldn’t be policed like hard narcotics because these laws, he argues, are ineffective. However, his comments come as the GOP is increasingly and unsubtly moving to attack birth control. Even using Plan B and “hard narcotics” in the same sentence sets off pretty loud alarm bells, further stigmatizing contraception and rendering it more vulnerable. “Anti-abortion extremist Eric Hovde celebrated the overturning of Roe and supports passing a new abortion ban,” Jackie Rosa, a spokesperson for Baldwin’s campaign, said in a statement to Jezebel. “These ignorant comments come as no surprise and show that he’s not fit to hold an office that could impact women’s health care decisions.”

Wisconsin Senate GOP nominee Eric Hovde falsely says the morning-after pill is abortion (it prevents pregnancies.)

“The vast majority of abortions today are done through the day-after pill.”

He also compares the morning-after pill to “hard narcotics” trafficking. pic.twitter.com/TVhlO6xJuA

— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) August 15, 2024

In May, Louisiana became the first state in the nation to pass a law to criminalize possession of mifepristone or misoprostol pills—which are used to facilitate medication abortions and are also used in a range of other medical situations—without a valid prescription. The law, set to take effect on October 1, would add medication abortion to the state’s controlled dangerous substances list as a Schedule IV drug, even though this makes no sense because a substance must be addictive to be classified under Louisiana’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law. Pregnant people who are imminently about to use the pills to terminate a pregnancy would be exempt, but Pregnancy Justice previously warned Jezebel that it’s unclear how law enforcement would determine if someone is definitely pregnant and definitely about to take the medication.

Also in May, Republican senators sweepingly blocked the Right to Contraception Act, with some citing an especially chilling reason: Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) voted against the bill because she baselessly claimed it would “mandate access to abortion drugs for women and girls of all ages,” and introduced her own bill that “does not include Plan B, which many folks on the right would consider abortive services. … We want to prevent a pregnancy, not end a pregnancy.” Under abortion bans, when a contraceptive like the morning after pill and abortion are regarded as the same, both can be banned.

Before Senate Republicans blocked the Right to Contraception Act, in 2022, just days after the Supreme Court killed Roe, almost 200 House Republicans voted against a bill to establish a right to birth control. On the state level, also in May, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) vetoed a bill to codify a right to obtain and use contraception in state law. And back in February, Tennessee Republicans also blocked a bill to codify IVF and birth control protections from even coming out of the state House committee. Tellingly, Republicans said it would limit the totality of the state’s abortion ban, implicitly equating birth control and IVF with abortion.

In a Friday statement, Dana Sussman, senior vice president of Pregnancy Justice, stressed the importance of “[pushing] back against the deeply disturbing spread of disinformation that creates a culture of fear.” She continued, “This prolonged campaign to stigmatize safe and effective reproductive health care medications—recently culminating in recently culminating in Louisiana passing a law that equates abortion pills to illicit drugs—will only increase the surveillance, prosecution, and incarceration of pregnant people.”