The debate over whether the landmark abortion law Roe vs. Wade should be codified in Rhode Island law is heating up once again. A series of abortion-related bills will be the subject of a House Judiciary Committee hearing starting Tuesday afternoon.
Scores of abortion-rights supporters and opponents are expected to turn out to offer testimony during a Judiciary Committee hearing stretching into the night.
Five abortion-related bills are up for discussion, including two separate approaches to codifying Roe vs. Wade, and proposed restrictions, including one measure that would recognize a fetus as a human life with the existence of a heartbeat.
The Judiciary hearing comes after both sides staged their own rallies inside the Statehouse last week.
State Senator Gayle Goldin (D-Providence), is the Senate sponsor of the measure known as the Reproductive Health Care Act. She says activists are responding to an increasingly hostile climate nationwide, where a shifting balance of power on the U.S. Supreme Court puts abortion rights at risk.
“We’ve had a president who’s glorified sexual assault, we’ve seen him use the power of his pen to limit access to abortion every way that he can, globally and locally,” Goldin said.
The head of Rhode Island’s most prominent anti-abortion group, Barth Bracy, was unavailable to speak with us yesterday. Instead, we talked with Mike Stenhouse, CEO of the conservative Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity. Stenhouse calls the Reproductive Health Care Act an extreme bill.
“It really is a New York-style, anytime, anywhere, by almost anybody abortion bill,” he said. “I don’t believe most Rhode Islanders, I don’t believe most pro-choice Rhode Islanders believe that late-term abortions and other parts of this legislation are acceptable.”
But the House sponsor of the bill, Rep. Edith Ajello (D-Providence), says her legislation would not lead to late-term abortions.
“It does delete the section of current law that is called ‘the partial-birth abortion ban,’ but that’s been found unconstitutional and so isn’t being enforced in Rhode Island anyhow,” Ajello said. “We do have the law of the larger land, law of the United States, which is a partial-birth abortion ban and that’s in effect — and would be in effect whatever we do here.”
House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello, during an interview last yeat at The Public’s Radio, described the thorny politics of bringing an abortion bill to the House floor: “It’s just divisive, for no real end, no real benefit either way.”
The lack of movement toward codifying Roe vs. Wade in Rhode Island might surprise some people, considering how supporting abortion rights is part of the Rhode Island Democratic Party Platform — and how Democrats hold 99 of the 113 seats in the General Assembly. But many Democrats in this heavily Catholic state oppose abortion rights.
Yet more progressives and women lawmakers have won election to the legislature in recent years. This time around, the Reproductive Health Care Act has attracted 56 cosponsors in the House and Senate.
By last November, Speaker Mattiello had modified his message a bit after polls showed strong support for abortion rights: “The Roe v. Wade issue is something that I believe has a lot of public support.”
It may have a lot of support. But it’s still not clear that any of the abortion-related bills will ever make it out of committee. Overturning Roe vs. Wade would have to be decided in the courts, and abortion rights opponents say states like Rhode Island would have time to respond if that ever happened.
