R.I. abortion-rights measure heads for vote Tuesday

March 05-- Mar. 5--PROVIDENCE -- An abortion-rights measure is headed for a vote in a Rhode Island legislative committee on Tuesday, despite the vehement opposition of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, the state GOP hierarchy -- and a former governor at odds with the state's current Catholic governor over abortion -- in this heavily Catholic state.

The legislation up for a vote in the House Judiciary Committee would keep abortion legal in Rhode Island, even if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized it. A matching Senate bill is slated for a hearing at the same time, and it is likely to draw many of the same activists on both sides of the issue as a grueling House hearing in late January.

The outcome rests in a few hands.

The last time Rhode Island lawmakers came this close to passing a law to enshrine the key tenets of Roe v. Wade in state law was in 1993, when the full House passed a bill championed by then-Rep. Linda Kushner.

On that day in May 1993, The Journal reported: "After a grueling three-hour debate, the House approved the abortion rights measure by a vote of 51 to 42. ... [The vote] marked the first time in the modern political history of this heavily Roman Catholic state that an abortion rights measure has been approved by either chamber of the General Assembly. (Past Assemblies have enacted anti-abortion legislation, most of which has been declared unconstitutional by federal courts.)"

The bill died in the Senate that year, which marked a period when abortion-rights supporter Bill Clinton was in the White House and the Supreme Court was viewed as highly unlikely to overturn its Roe v. Wade decision in the near future. In that context, the House vote that year was viewed as largely symbolic.

With Donald Trump in the White House and Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Supreme Court, the warring sides in the decades-long abortion debate now have reason to hope -- or alternately, to fear -- a reversal.

"We know our future in this country hangs in the balance of a few very powerful, very conservative men," said state Sen. Gayle Goldin, the sponsor of the matching Senate bill, at a recent rally at the State House.

The 1993 debate sounded almost word-for-word the same as it does now, more than a quarter-century later.

"Once again, the people who would take away the right Rhode Island women have had for 20 years to have safe, legal, medical abortions are making outrageous and untrue claims about a bill to maintain this right," Kushner wrote in an opinion piece that appeared in The Journal on May 6, 1993. "The bill does not enlarge or diminish abortion rights in Rhode Island. Rather, it codifies what has been the medical practice regarding abortion, as outlined in the existing regulations of the Rhode Island Health Department under the legal protection of Roe v. Wade."

Then, as now: No abortions would be allowed in the state after "fetal viability" unless a doctor determines that carrying the pregnancy to term would threaten the life or health of the mother. And then, as now: opponents argued that the bill's supporters had a hidden agenda: opening the door to more abortions after the sixth month of pregnancy.

About 2,000 abortions were performed in Rhode Island in 2017, which was less than half the already much-shrunken number in 2011, according to Health Department data. Of those who had abortions in 2017, 1,740 were age 21 or older, 201 were between 18 and 20 years old, and 50 were under age 18. It is not clear how many -- if any -- were post-24-week abortions.

One of the trigger points in the current debate is the proposed repeal of Rhode Island's 1970s-era "fetal homicide" law, which equates an assault on a pregnant woman that leads to "the willful killing of an unborn quick child" to manslaughter.

Paul Benjamin Linton, the Chicago-based lawyer advising the Rhode Island Right to Life Committee, says this would repeal "the only protection in state law for an unborn child who is killed in the course of an assault against his or her mother which would be murder if the mother died."

Though Cranston police tried to use the law in a high-profile 2015 case, a spokeswoman for current Attorney General Peter Neronha said Tuesday that the 1975 law has never been successfully used in a prosecution in Rhode Island. Born R. Smith, the accused in the 2015 case was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to other charges: first-degree murder and arson.

As Steven Brown, executive director of the ACLU of Rhode Island, explains the history: "The quick child statute was immediately challenged and declared unconstitutional by the federal district court because it did not contain a 'life or health' exception to post-viability abortions. On appeal, the appeals court reversed the finding, but only on the basis that the doctors challenging the statute did not have 'standing' to challenge the statute."

"Thus, the quick child statute has remained on the books, but it has never been enforced due to its constitutional infirmities," Brown said. Even in the 2015 case cited by the Rhode Island Right to Life Committee lobbyist Barth Bracy on Twitter, he said, "The quick child statute was not enforced and it played absolutely no role in the prosecution of the case."

The debate has pitted current Gov. Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, against former Republican Gov. Donald Carcieri, who was featured in a series of robo-calls over the weekend urging a public show of opposition to the abortion-rights legislation.

Asked what Raimondo has been doing, her spokesman Josh Block said: "The Governor has had many meetings and conversations with advocates over the past several weeks and has heard from people on all sides of this issue. She has been clear and consistent on her support for codifying existing protections under Roe v. Wade into state law."

-- kgregg@providencejournal.­com

(401) 277-7078

On Twitter: @kathyprojo

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