The Republican-led but deeply divided New Hampshire House of Representatives rejected three abortion bills Thursday, refusing to further restrict or protect reproductive rights.
Current state law prohibits abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy, unless the mother’s health or life is at risk or there is a fatal fetal abnormality. The House on Thursday voted 193-184 in favor of a measure asking voters to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution. However, the vote fell short of the majority needed to advance the proposal.
The House also introduced a bill that would require abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy to be performed in a hospital with a neonatal intensive care unit with two doctors present, and a third bill that would ban abortions after 15 days of pregnancy. It was also rejected. The latter would be akin to an outright ban, since virtually no one would know that she was pregnant at that point, and lawmakers took the additional step of voting to “indefinitely postpone” the bill, allowing it to be moved to a later date. made recovery more difficult.
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The only one of the three measures discussed was a constitutional amendment that would protect abortions up to 24 weeks and allow abortions beyond that if doctors deem it necessary. The project was sponsored by Congresswoman Amanda Toll, who expressed her support for the proposal while holding her week-old daughter.
New Hampshire State Capitol in Concord, New Hampshire (April 2017). (Fox News)
“The birth of my third child, a little girl, has renewed my commitment to ensuring that all Granite State residents, including Daniela, have the right to make their own reproductive decisions.” she said. “We need to send this to the voters and let them decide.”
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022, voters in seven states have either upheld abortion rights or blocked attempts to curb them on statewide ballots. New Hampshire does not allow citizen-initiated voting, but the state constitution can be changed if three-fifths of the state legislature agrees to put the issue before voters, and at least two-thirds of voters can A majority of the members must approve the amendment.
“The people of the Granite State should not be fighting for reproductive rights every Congress with a bill that bans early-term abortions,” said Toll, a Democrat from Keene. “Currently, abortion is safe and legal here, but there are no state or federal protections for abortion rights in New Hampshire.”
Opponents argued that the amendment’s language was too vague and left too much to doctors’ discretion. He also said there was no need to do so because the current law was widely supported by the public.
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“Despite constant political rhetoric to the contrary, there is no threat to abortion rights in this state,” said Rep. Bob Lynn, a Republican from Windham. “Therefore, this proposed constitutional amendment is completely unnecessary.”
