Republican support for over-the-counter birth control roils Colorado Senate race

WHEAT RIDGE, Colo. — Democratic Sen. Mark Udall is going after his opponent’s proposal to make birth control an over-the-counter drug.

Udall brought Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and the national president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund to a suburban Denver battleground where female voters frequently decide statewide elections in Colorado.

The three blasted a plan by Republican Rep. Cory Gardner to make the birth-control pill available without a doctor’s prescription. They call it a cynical attempt to distract women voters from his record opposing abortion rights and access to reproductive health.

Udall is making women’s reproductive rights a major plank of his campaign. Friday’s rally came less than a week after Gardner started airing an ad casting himself as a “new kind of Republican” who supports over-the-counter birth control.