R.I. abortion opponents press to block vote on House bill

March 03-- Mar. 3--PROVIDENCE -- The Roman Catholic bishop of Providence, the Rhode Island Right to Life Committee and the chairman of the state GOP mounted a strenuous campaign on Saturday to head off a vote Tuesday on the latest version of a bill to keep abortion legal in the state, no matter what a more conservative U.S. Supreme Court might do to the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.

Right to Life Committee lobbyist Barth Bracy aimed his sharpest words at House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello for allowing the scheduled vote by the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

In a statement posted on Twitter, Bracy, writing for the state's lead anti-abortion advocacy group, wrote:

"It would be a very sad and despicable legacy for a self-professed pro-life Speaker to be responsible for creating the first-ever statutory right to abortion in Rhode Island state history, particularly one so broad and so extreme."

Despite the reported attempts by House negotiators to address concerns raised by the anti-abortion lobby, Bracy said the reworked bill only "pretends to address concerns raised by thousands of Rhode Islanders."

He said Paul Benjamin Linton, the lawyer advising the Right to Life Committee, continues to believe -- after reviewing the amended bill -- that "it is 'a gross distortion and blatant misrepresentation' to claim that this 'slightly revised' version of the original bill would merely codify the principles of Roe v. Wade. ... [The legislation] remains an extreme abortion bill, like its counterparts in New York and Virginia.

"It is a sweeping expansion of the abortion license in Rhode Island, which will prevent meaningful state regulation of the abortion industry, protect 2nd and 3rd trimester abortion methods such as partial birth abortions, dismemberment abortions, and abortions performed on pain-capable unborn children, and eliminate meaningful restriction and limitation of post-viability abortions," he wrote.

The Most Rev. Thomas J. Tobin, Roman Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Providence, also weighed in on Twitter, days after the diocese issued a call to parishioners to come to the State House -- during the 40 days of Lent -- to protest any movement on an abortion-rights bill.

His Saturday afternoon tweet: "I'm hopeful that, in the end, the General Assembly and the Governor will do the right thing and oppose any legislation that provides for late-term abortions, for any reason. It's an abhorrent practice and Rhode Islanders are clearly and strongly opposed."

In their objections, the bishop and the chief lobbyist for the anti-abortion movement put little stock in these words in the reworked bill introduced by Rep. Anastasia Williams: "The termination of an individual's pregnancy after fetal viability is expressly prohibited except when necessary, in the medical judgment of the physician, to preserve the life or health" of the mother.

Also added to the reworked bill: a guarantee that nothing in the proposed new state law would "abrogate" the federal "Partial Birth Abortion Ban of 2003" (18 U.S. Code § 1531), which prohibits the late-term delivery -- and killing -- of a fully developed baby, the image at the heart of the Right to Life campaign here and beyond. The federal law makes an exception for a late-term abortion only when necessary to preserve the health and life of the mother.

But even with those amendments, Linton, a Chicago-based lawyer specializing in pro-life litigation and legislative consulting -- who served as general counsel of Americans United for Life -- told the Rhode Island anti-abortion group that the legislation does not "define the scope of the mandated 'health' exception ... [which] could include mental health (psychological or emotional)," which in his view "is not a prohibition ... [only] the appearance of a prohibition."

"More troubling," the lawyer wrote: "nothing [in the reworked bill] restricts the method of abortion a physician may use in performing a post-viability abortion."

In his seven-page memo to Bracy, Linton also suggests the wording could potentially be interpreted as a requirement that the "state pay for all abortions sought by Medicaid eligible pregnant women."

Advocates for passage of an abortion-rights guarantee disagreed, point for point, with Linton's arguments as they were conveyed by the anti-abortion lobby at a recent House hearing.

On Friday, when the latest version of the Williams bill was unveiled, the Rhode Island Coalition for Reproductive Freedom applauded the reworked bill, saying: "This bill both addresses concerns that have been raised regarding the original version of H5125, and achieves the goal of protecting access to safe, legal abortion in Rhode Island no matter what happens at the federal level."

"This is a blatant disregard for the facts," tweeted the abortion-rights advocacy group known as The Womxn Project. Contrary to what anti-abortion groups say, the legislation would "codify Roe, remove unconstitutional laws, protect individual right to abortion until viability, provide medical options [including] abortion after viability to save a woman's life or health -- that's it. #repro4RI"

Steven Brown, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, said in an emailed statement: "This revised legislation was crafted to address all the purported ambiguities that opponents said existed in the original bill. The comments from those opposing this new version make one thing abundantly clear: their problem is not with the bill; their problem is with Roe v. Wade. That is why the bill's passage to protect women's health is so crucial."

On Saturday evening, state GOP Chairman Brandon Bell issued his own denunciation of the legislation slated for a Tuesday House Judiciary Committee vote which, as he read it: "repeals a law which makes it a crime to kill unborn children when a crime is committed against the mother and ... [allows] cities and towns to cover abortions in the health insurance plans they provide for their employees."

"A very sad day is approaching for Rhode Islanders, a majority of whom do not support abortion after the first trimester," he wrote. "Late term abortions for vague health reasons will now be legal under state law. Unborn children will lose a possible legal protection if their mother is a victim of a crime. Taxpayers could now be paying for the abortions of local government employees."

"This terrible legislation is passing because certain powerful State House politicians care more about power for themselves than life of the unborn," he wrote. "They are enablers; enablers of the worst kind. They know this legislation is wrong but they are allowing it to happen because of their desire for personal power," he said, quoting Matthew 16:26: "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, but lose his soul?"

-- kgregg@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7078

On Twitter: @kathyprojo

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