SJC to hear abortion bill in effort to revive legislation

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PROVIDENCE — The battle over the possible expansion of legal abortion access in Rhode Island is not over.

On June 11, after press time, the Senate Judiciary Committee was scheduled to vote on a bill, filed by State Rep. Anastasia P. Williams, D-Providence, that supporters argued would codify Roe v. Wade’s protection of legal abortion in Rhode Island state law.

But the state’s pro-life community was still warning that the legislation would increase the likelihood of late-term abortions while eroding parental consent laws and weakening Rhode Island’s ability to regulate abortion clinics.

“Beyond these and other serious, particular problems, there is the startling reality that — for the first time in history — Rhode Island law would create and recognize a ‘right’ to take the life of an innocent human being through abortion even though our state Constitution explicitly disavows such a ‘right,’” Carol A. Owens, director of the Office of Life and Family Ministry for the Diocese of Providence, wrote in an action alert sent the day before the Senate Judiciary Committee vote.

The vote was scheduled to be held a little more than three weeks after the same committee voted 5-4 against recommending the Reproductive Health Care Act, a version of the abortion legislation sponsored by Sen. Gayle Goldin, D-Providence, to the full Senate floor.

“It would be very foolish for pro-lifers to stand down now,” said Barth Bracy, the executive director of the Rhode Island Right to Life Committee.

Since the Senate Judiciary Committee’s May 14 vote that stalled the drive to expand abortion access, the abortion lobby had been pushing aggressively to revive the legislation in the Senate and bring it to Gov. Gina Raimondo, who supports the bill’s aims, to sign into law.

In March, Williams’ legislation passed the state House of Representatives, further motivating supporters to lobby state senators to vote on an abortion bill before the current legislative session adjourns on June 30.

“They’re hoping to get it done this session,” Bracy said. “They’re spending a lot of money. They’re playing the long game and the short game, and they have a lot of money to do that.”

On June 5, the Rhode Island Coalition for Reproductive Freedom organized a large rally at the Rhode Island Statehouse that featured Toni Van Pelt, the president of the National Organization for Women, as the main speaker. Nearly drowned out by the competing chants of pro-choice activists and pro-life counter-protestors, Pelt accused the Trump Administration of giving “a blank check to the religious right to enact a fundamentalist vision of government that is straight out of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’”

The wording of William’s legislation allows abortions to be performed after a fetus is viable outside the womb — usually around the 22nd week of pregnancy — in cases where the physician determines it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.

Supporters said legislation such as Williams’ bill and the Reproductive Health Care Act would have only reinforced what the U.S. Supreme Court currently permits. However, local and national pro-life advocates have warned that the bills’ language will pave the way for late-term abortions, for virtually any reason, in Rhode Island.

A seven-page analysis on the bills, written by attorney Paul Benjamin Linton, a lawyer who served as general counsel of Americans United for Life, earlier this year said the legislation would turn Rhode Island into “an abortion haven” where any unborn child could be killed up until the moment of birth, with the state given no recourse to restrict or regulate abortion facilities.

Bracy said the narrative that Williams’ legislation is needed to codify Roe is wrong and alarmist, but one shared willingly by a compliant media.

“They know this bill goes way beyond Roe,” Bracy said. “The perception being created by this abortion industry with their media allies is completely false, but that perception sometimes becomes more important than the reality.”

To counter that narrative and to send a counter message to state legislators, Bracy and others have been encouraging pro-life people to wear light blue shirts and spend time at the State House during the week — on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays — to make their presence felt.

“It’s just about being there, giving witness, that we are the silent majority, and that the other side doesn’t speak for Rhode Island,” Bracy said. “We have people faithfully coming down every week to the State House.”

One of those regular pro-life witnesses has been Leticia Garcia, a parishioner of Holy Ghost Church in Providence, who held a couple of pro-life signs during the large recent pro-abortion rally in the State House Rotunda. Garcia said she was there to speak on behalf of unborn children.

“They have a right to life,” Garcia said.