it's becoming much clearer which issues are emerging as possible flash points in the 2024 presidential election as both Democrats and Republicans start fine-tuning their messaging and pushing Big legislative proposals moderate and Progressive Democrats appear to be focusing their energy on social issues like abortion and Reproductive Rights as areas to motivate voters New Jersey congresswoman Mikie Sherrill is leading on new legislation that would expand access to contraception medication a fight she is taking on amid chaos in Congress over a military spending Bill she joins me now congresswoman thank you for joining us from DC for the show so talk to me about this new bill the convenient contraception act how do you go about enabling more people to access this pill um well that's exactly what this piece of legislation is about so as you probably know women can get a three-month prescription for birth control and what this bill would allow you to do is to get a whole year prescription which would just make it so much easier to have that kind of access we know that the three-month limit um leads to often gaps in coverage unwanted results and so as you're talking about Family Planning and you're talking about all the different things you can imagine going on whether it's travel or just different family um things that you have going on it's so important to have this longer access to birth control we also know that in areas across the country millions of women are in what we call contraception deserts meaning they don't have full access to reproductive health care options like contraception it's really hard for them to access that so making it easier it just provides much better health outcomes for women is legislation like this needed now given the fact that the FDA has you know approved an over-the-counter contraceptive pill the O pill just recently you know contraception um for many of us is is very personal we like a certain brand we we found that it works well for us um in so many different ways and so sometimes people have a prescription that they very much prefer um and so having access to that even if you know if you have the over-the-counter option that's great but to also have maybe your favorite brand uh and prescription medication that you can get a year-long access to just makes uh for so many of us I'd say you know so many of us working moms who find ourselves always so busy and on the run this just takes one thing off the table that we have to manage and really makes life a lot easier I'll also tell you that New Jersey has actually passed uh sorry that's the bell for votes but uh New Jersey has actually passed legislation I'll start over New Jersey has actually passed legislation to allow people to access one year's worth of contraception at a time but in speaking to women across the district so many of them find that they can't have access to that but they actually go in and still are only getting the three-month prescriptions and when they call their health care insurance company they're told what we just like to do three months so if you want to get a full year access just negotiate that with your pharmacist which makes no sense to me I've never gone to my pharmacist said here's my prescription but instead of three months I'd actually like a full year if you could do that I've never heard of that so this Federal legislation I think is really necessary so this is sort of looking to close I guess what would be a loophole in what the private insurers are required to do I'm curious congresswoman we've seen Democrats in particular really coalesce around Reproductive Rights um as what I'll call a fundamental issue you heading into the 2024 election do you see it that way or is this an item we know that you've worked on Reproductive Rights in the past um but are you seeing this as an emerging issue as we I the next presidential race you know I think this is such a key issue we many of us were pretty appalled when the Supreme Court ruled back what we felt were just basic kind of the floor of protections that we could expect in reproductive Health uh and health care and so to see Roe versus Wade overturned um but what the Supreme Court said was this was going to be a state's rights issue and even though we didn't like that and I didn't like that because of course we're now seeing all of the many court cases in places like Texas where women are having very bad near fatal results because of lack of access to reproductive Health Care um what we didn't anticipate or maybe didn't want to anticipate is that that wouldn't be the end that now we see so many Republicans coming after Reproductive Rights Nationwide and they're not going to stop until they have a nationwide ban against abortion and access to abortion care and we've seen that in things like the National Defense authorization act where service women who don't have a say as to where you are given orders so you can be a great Jersey girl who decides I'm going to go serve my country and suddenly you're stationed in Corpus Christi Texas as I was and suddenly you have no access to the reproductive Healthcare and Reproductive Rights that you assumed you would have in New Jersey and if you need an abortion or if you have some some very bad issues related to reproductive Health Care um you are going to have to travel to get access to those services and the dod the Department of Defense now offers to help you travel and to make sure you have the leave you need to go do that and we are seeing Republicans trying to put travel bans on our service women and we are seeing tuberville in the Senate holding up all military flag promotions we currently don't have a common dawn of them yeah let me ask you about that because your colleagues in the Senate are set to vote possibly well into the night on the ndaa the National Defense authorization act it was a bit chaotic when your house took the vote do you anticipate bipartisanship uh to get this thing moved by tomorrow so you all can go on recess so we passed a bipartisan bill out of committee only one person voted against it and the entire house armed services committee and then it hit the floor and extremist in the house loaded it up with really far-right Draconian measures that were against what most of the American people would want to see so things like a travel ban for our service members and quite frankly this was the very very first time I voted against the National Defense authorization act it's usually a very bipartisan piece of legislation um I think it will be bipartisan out of the Senate because the Democrats are in charge and I think they have a commitment to serving our men and women in service and making sure that we are not using the Defense Act to score political points but rather to support our men and women in uniform so I think that will come out of the house what we still have a huge issue with is that Senator tuberville is holding up all military flag promotion it is a huge hit on Readiness and I am hearing that he is dug in and that he does not want to move and and I have to tell you for somebody to have such a huge misunderstanding of Readiness of supporting our men and women in uniform is really offensive to me um that he is disregarding all of the many ways this harms not only our service members but their families it is really incredibly offensive having served of course as a former Navy pilot very quickly what does that mean then for our national security our preparedness well um right now as I mentioned we don't have a confirmed commandant of the Marine Corps um as you know we have a lot going on in the South China City that's where our Marine Corps is very active we need them there and we need them to have good leadership we just saw the president put forward the very first um woman to be the chief of Naval operations she'll be the first female on um The Joint Chiefs of Staff not only is she a fantastic officer who I served with at the Atlantic Fleet headquarters and is really well regarded but also a milestone here that I think many people in our Fleet are watching she can't be confirmed she's her confirmation is being held up we have the first woman who will be our superintendent of the United States Naval Academy she should have been in office this summer she is being held up and that is just that that is doesn't even you know come close to mentioning all of the men and women in uniform whose promotions are being held up they cannot move to their new Duty station they can't get their kids in school they can't have their kids under you know make new friends they are all being held up and they don't know when they are going to be able to move their spouses it's very hard as a military spouse to hold down a job because you get moved so much but the way you do that is is a lot of preparation a lot of contact a lot of Engagement they don't know when they're going to be able to move um and if these men and women don't don't move to their next Duty station and don't kind of check off that level of experience that they need to continue to advance in our military they're going to have to to retire because there are more people coming up that need to get that experience if we're going to continue to move people into leadership so this is really putting people's careers at risk and these are men and women who maybe served three decades in our Armed Forces these are people who have made sacrifice whose families have made sacrifices so they could serve our nation and we're treating them quite frankly like dirt so for tuber built tuberville to act as if this is you know no problem and he says oh I I don't think this is a problem well I mean he's obviously never served because he has no understanding of what this is doing to the men and women in uniform congresswoman Mikie Sherrill thank you so much for your time thanks so much for having me