Michigan GOP House candidate says birth control should be banned, blasts sex outside marriage

A former President Donald Trump-endorsed GOP candidate for a seat in the Michigan House of Representatives says if elected, she will work to ban all forms of birth control.

In an interview with the far-right website Church Militant, Jacky Eubanks said that if it ever came to a vote in the Michigan Legislature, “I would have to side with it should not be legal,” adding that birth control “gives people the false sense of security that they can have consequence-free sex, and that’s not true and that’s not correct. Sex ought to be between one man and one woman in the confines of marriage.”

The issue of contraceptive freedom, seemingly long-settled with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1965 landmark Griswold v. Connecticut decision, has come into the fore of Republican politics with the anticipated overturning of 1973’s Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. That ruling firmly established a constitutional right to privacy, which if overturned would place in jeopardy related decisions on contraception and marriage equality.

In Michigan, all of the Republican candidates for attorney general — Michigan GOP-endorsed Matthew DePerno, former House Speaker Tom Leonard and Rep. Ryan Berman (R-Commerce Twp.) —  earlier this year expressed a willingness to overturn the Griswold decision, saying it was wrongly decided and should be left up to each state to decide.

Eubanks prefaced her remarks on contraception by explicitly linking it to her personal religious beliefs.

“The reason the West is great is because western civilization’s underpinning is Christianity,” she said. “And you cannot have a successful society outside of the Christian moral order and things like abortion and things like gay marriage are outside of the Christian moral order and they lead to chaos and destruction and a culture of death.”

Eubanks, who says she’s a Hillsdale College graduate, Christian missionary and former Trump staffer, is facing off against St. Clair County Clerk Jay DeBoyer and Algonac City Councilmember Jake Skarbek for the GOP nomination in the Aug. 2 primary. Two Democrats are in the running for the primary as well: Kelly Noland, a nurse and Army veteran, and Jamie Murray.

The newly drawn 63rd District encompasses portions of St. Clair and Macomb counties.

GOP attorney general hopefuls seek to overturn landmark contraception law, want election ‘audit’

Even though Trump lost Michigan by more than 154,000 votes, Eubanks has firmly embraced the conspiracy that Trump won the 2020 election. Despite a prior audit finding no evidence of outside interference in Macomb County’s 2020 election, Eubanks has repeatedly called for another audit to be conducted. 

Trump won Macomb County by 9 points.

Her other “campaign priorities” include banning critical race theory, prosecuting and impeaching Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and investigating and prosecuting Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson for baseless allegations of election fraud.