Michigan is handing out free contraception next month, including emergency contraception, condoms and over-the-counter oral contraceptives, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) said Wednesday.
The contraceptives will be distributed through community partners and federally qualified health centers across the state to the general public, regardless of insurance status, for as long as supplies are available. The effort also provides residents information on how they can continue to get contraception supplies covered, including through Medicaid.
The program will be paid for through a $5.6 million appropriation in the 2024 budget to support the state Department of Health and Human Service’s expansion of its family planning program, according to the announcement.
“Everyone, no matter how much money they make, deserves to make their own decisions about their own reproductive health and future,” Whitmer said in a statement. “With our family planning initiative, ‘Take Control of Your Birth Control,’ we are building on our work to protect reproductive freedom for all Michiganders. By expanding access to essential family planning tools, we are underscoring our commitment to ensuring Michiganders, along with their families and trusted health care providers, can make their own decisions about their own bodies and lives.”
The move comes as Democrats elevate access to contraception and other reproductive health as an issue in the November elections. The party sees it as one of the Republicans’ top vulnerabilities up and down the ballot.
In a coinciding move, the Biden administration on Monday proposed a rule that would make health insurance companies cover over-the-counter contraception products, including condoms, spermicide and emergency contraception, without a prescription and at no cost.
Democrats and reproductive rights advocates have been warning of impending attacks on contraceptive access since the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court case that overturned the constitutional right to an abortion. They point to Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion that the court should also reconsider the right to contraception.
Democrats filed dozens of bills in state legislatures over the past year that would cement that right, modeled after one that U.S. House Democrats passed in the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, with only eight Republicans voting in favor.
Opponents have said there is no evidence that contraception access is in jeopardy. Some Republican-led states passed laws in 2024 that expanded access to hormonal contraceptives.
But broader efforts to secure contraception access have been stymied by conflicting messages from some conservative groups that consider certain methods, including intrauterine devices and emergency contraception, abortifacients, contrary to scientific evidence.
Prescriptions for birth control and emergency contraception have sharply declined in states with highly restrictive abortion laws. About half the states ban or severely restrict abortion.