Abortion bills fire up both sides at R.I. State House

Jan. 30--PROVIDENCE -- Abortion rights. Women's rights. The "flutter" of a fetal heartbeat. "A culture of death."

Hundreds of people with strong feelings about abortion descended on the Rhode Island State House Tuesday for an hours-long House Judiciary hearing on five bills at extreme ends of the abortion debate.

On one side: Former state lawmaker Linda Kushner talked about how close she came to dying from an illegal abortion in Baltimore as a college student in 1960 -- picked up by strangers in a Howard Johnson's parking lot and driven in circles in the dark to a house where she was given drugs to knock her out. Hours later, she was doubled over in searing pain with a raging fever.

"I have decided to come forward after 60 years and tell you this story, which is deeply personal and still disturbing because I was so close to death," Kushner, who later married and had two children, told the lawmakers. "I want you to know what you are dealing with if we lose the protections of Roe v. Wade ... I don't want any woman to ever have to undergo what I went through."

On the other side, lawyer Joseph Cavanagh lamented the "loss of core values," "the loneliness of the sexual revolution," "the deterioration of stable family life" and "the destructive impact of pornography" among the "defects in our culture" that have led some people to think "killing unborn babies" is acceptable when "deep down in our inner selves, we know that killing unborn babies is wrong."

"Why do this now?" he asked of the legislation up for debate, which would enshrine the protections of the historic 1973 abortion-rights ruling known as Roe v. Wade decision in state law. "There is no present 'danger,' no imminent case pending which presents a so-called 'threat' to a ... Roe v. Wade reversal or even modification ... It is unnecessary," he argued in his written testimony.

Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza came with his fiancée, Stephanie Gonzalez, and their seven-month-old baby to warn the lawmakers what will happen if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

"What does it mean for the most vulnerable here in Providence if they don't have access," Elorza said. "The reality is that abortions will not stop. Instead what you'll have is resorting to the very harrowing practices of using coat hangers and other unsafe, unhealthy methods to terminate pregnancies."

Added Gonsalves: "Seven months ago, I gave birth to a little human ... I was very lucky though. I was not living in poverty. I had access to health insurance. I felt comfortable where I was professionally. I wasn't a victim of inter-relationship rape or abuse. I had a supportive partner. I didn't have to worry about paying for child care.... Had my circumstances been different, I don't know that I would have made the same choice."

"What bothers me most about the anti-abortion argument is that we seem to assume ... that women just can't be trusted to make decisions for themselves and their bodies and therefore we must legislate for them.... This is sexist ... insulting."

Top-level state officials considered potential candidates for governor in 2022 -- and a spokesman for a third -- also testified in favor of preserving abortion rights in state law: Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, state Treasurer Seth Magaziner and a spokesman for Attorney General Peter Neronha.

Arguing the other side, a woman who identified herself as Dr. Doreen Ciancaglini, of North Providence, said, "It is a scientific fact that the fetal heart begins beating at three weeks of life. That's 22 days ... What is driving the need to make abortion even more common?"

The testimony was in many ways a replay of arguments Rhode Island lawmakers heard last year and the year before.

The hope and the fear among advocates on each side stem from the confirmation in October of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Abortion opponents hope Kavanaugh will, at some point, provide the decisive vote to strike down the Roe v. Wade ruling, which established a constitutional right to early term abortion.

The anti-abortion lobby endorsed bills to prohibit what is described as "a dismemberment abortion on a living unborn child," except to save the life of the pregnant woman, and define the point at which human life begins as the point at which there is a detectable heartbeat, or "flutter." A third seeks to guarantee "the right to life'" at fertilization.

Abortion-rights advocates focused on Rep. Edith Ajello's bill to bar any arm of Rhode Island government from interfering with a woman's decision to "terminate a pregnancy provided the decision is made prior to fetal viability" -- which is defined as the point at which the attending physician determines "there is a reasonable likelihood of the fetus' sustained survival outside of the womb."

More than half the House -- 39 of the 75 members -- have co-sponsored Ajello's bill, which also seeks to repeal a number of laws ruled unconstitutional and unenforceable.

An alternative bill sponsored by new House Labor Committee Chairwoman Anastasia Williams was also on the agenda. The Williams bill covers some of the same ground, but also attempts to directly address the R.I. Right to Life Committee's oft-stated (and adamantly disputed) concern that the Ajello bill, if passed, would allow unrestricted abortions right up until the ninth month of pregnancy.

The Williams bill does so by keeping -- rather than repealing -- two stricken and currently unenforceable laws. One bans the "willful killing of unborn quick child" and the other, a "partial birth" abortion, which is defined as one in which a doctor "delivers a living human fetus before killing the infant and completing the delivery." (While the state law was struck down, federal law still bans a specific late-term abortion procedure, except when necessary to save the life of the mother.)

The ACLU has said the Williams bill "amounts to a back-door effort to use the bill as a vehicle for 'fetal homicide' legislation, which specifically, and problematically, treats a fetus as a person."

No votes were taken on any of the five measures; all were held for further study.

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