WASHINGTON — House Democrats unveiled a new plan on Tuesday to attempt to force a vote on contraceptive protections — or at least to get Republicans in their chamber on record on the issue before November’s elections.

The petition from Democratic Minority Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and North Carolina Rep. Kathy Manning comes just one day before Senate Democrats are set to vote on legislation protecting birth control access and three weeks ahead of the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s overturning of the Roe versus Wade decision, which established a right to access abortion care.

Democrats plan to spend the month of June pushing votes on a range of reproductive health matters, as they seek to highlight Republican opposition on an issue that’s likely to be among the most salient in the 2024 November elections, as it was in 2022.

House Democrats are launching this week a discharge petition, which requires 218 members — or, a majority of the chamber — to force bills to be taken up on the House floor even without the backing of the speaker and majority party. Democrats have tried to use this lever before on various topics from government funding to foreign aid to gun violence prevention, but those efforts have all fallen short of the necessary threshold.

A senior Democratic leadership aide confirmed to NBC News that the petition is “ripe”— meaning it’s sat for the required 30-plus days in committee and can now be opened up for lawmakers to sign on. Even if they fall short again on a discharge petition, Democrats plan to highlight Republicans who refuse to sign on to protect contraception, particularly moderate members up for re-election in vulnerable districts this fall. Or, in the words of another Dem leadership aide: “Does the GOP stand for freedom or extremism?”

The new discharge petition would force a vote on the Right to Contraception Act, the same legislation that the Democratic-controlled Senate will vote on Wednesday, which protects access to all FDA-approved birth control measures, including intra-uterine devices (IUDs) and birth control pills.

In a letter to colleagues Sunday previewing the week’s votes and focus, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., warned of “the scourge of the Republicans’ anti-reproductive rights agenda” extending to contraceptive access, too.

“We’ve seen right-wing judges, Justices and extremist Republicans calling on the Supreme Court to reconsider the constitutional right to contraception and states are trying to ban access to some or all contraceptives by restricting public funding for these products and services,” he wrote, promising “Democrats will never relent until we reverse the immense damage MAGA Republicans and the Supreme Court have inflicted.”