By: Cindy Rosenwald | Published: 9/24/2021 in the Union Leader
AS A MEMBER of both the New Hampshire House and Senate for nearly 20 years, and having served on both the Health and Finance Committees, I have heard too many factually incorrect statements from Republican lawmakers in the name of one self-righteous moral cause or another. Whether these statements are made through a misunderstanding of the facts or represent deliberate attempts to mislead is arguable. However, on one issue there can be no misunderstanding.
Chris Sununu has done more than any governor in New Hampshire history to make it harder for Granite Staters to access reproductive health care. Since signing the first abortion ban in the modern history of the state in June, the last several weeks have seen his anti-women’s health crusade hit rock bottom: every Republican member of his Executive Council voted to defund Planned Parenthood in New Hampshire. Make no mistake, Sununu campaigned for and endorsed every single member of the Executive Council who voted to defund reproductive health centers — a vote he took in 2015 himself when he was a councilor. With the New Hampshire State House and Senate majority comprised of the most deeply conservative lawmakers in a generation and a Supreme Court majority in Washington that has failed — without full argument or briefing — to uphold the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy in Texas, women of the Granite State should now be aware of the imminent danger to their rights in the months ahead. Ultra-right wing legislators in the State House intend to continue their attacks on women’s reproductive freedom and health care, and we must fight back. Gov. Sununu’s actions have demonstrated time after time that he is willing to pass some of the worst anti-choice legislation in state history and support electing lawmakers who will do the same. At every opportunity he tries to frame his agenda as anything but what it truly is: the most radical, right wing attack on women’s reproductive rights seen in New Hampshire in our lifetimes.
It’s time to hold Governor Sununu and his fellow Republicans accountable for what they have done. Voters will judge them on their mandates on invasive transvaginal ultrasounds for abortion care, for their abortion ban, for making no exceptions for rape, incest, or fatal fetal diagnoses, and for criminalizing our doctors. Voters will judge them on taking basic cancer screening and sexually transmitted disease care away from 12,000 New Hampshire residents just to score partisan political points. This is about power over, and disdain for, women. Nothing more, nothing less. And we see right through it.
Nothing short of a full repeal of Sununu’s anti-constitutional abortion ban is needed to give women peace of mind.
Sen. Cindy Rosenwald (D-Nashua) represents District 13.