R.I. lawmakers appear poised to guarantee right to abortion

PROVIDENCE -- Abortion-rights warriors are on the verge of winning their decades-long fight for a state law protecting the legality of abortion in Rhode Island.

Wednesday began with this tweet from Catholic Bishop Thomas J. Tobin: "Praying fervently today that God will enlighten the minds and hearts of R.I. State Senators to vote against the horrible, extreme pro-abortion legislation being considered today."

But the momentum appears to have swung the other way in the most Catholic state in the nation.

Majorities in the Senate and the House are poised to take final votes Wednesday night on legislation to preserve the "status quo" in Rhode Island. As defined in the legislation, that means abortions are allowed up until the point a fetus could live outside the womb. They would only be allowed later "when necessary to preserve the health or life'' of the pregnant woman.

"It's not here yet, but boy it feels close," said Rep. Edith Ajello, the 75-year-old Providence lawmaker who has introduced a "reproductive freedom" bill so many times she no longer remembers when she first inherited the fight from a string of former lawmakers, dating back to the 1970s.

As the debate swung from the House in March to the Senate, deeply held religious beliefs collided with the anger and fervor of women's rights activists in the Trump era; the dominant church in Rhode Island waged -- and appears to have lost -- a holy war against "the sin? of abortion; and a House speaker who promised to be "the firewall" against "ultra-left-wing groups" felt compelled to let colleagues vote, for the first time in a quarter-century, on an abortion-rights bill. And now Senate President Dominick Ruggerio has agreed to do the same.

Ajello -- a grandmother who has spoken about an abortion she had in Pennsylvania in 1965 before it was legal, and before she had her two children -- attributes the previously unimaginable willingness of Rhode Island's mostly male, antiabortion leaders to allow a vote on the bill "to a combination of things."

Her list includes: the election in 2016 and 2018 of more pro-abortion-rights legislators in the House and Senate; the adoption in some other states of "pieces of legislation limiting reproductive freedom in ways that wouldn't have been imagined years ago"; the increasingly conservative makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court; and the efforts of the "broader and more active coalition" of Rhode Island advocacy groups pushing for passage.

In March, after the House passed an earlier version of the legislation by a 44-to-30 vote, Mattiello told reporters, "Every issue has its time and its day and for the House, this session, this was its time and day based on the overwhelming majority opinion in the room. It passed pretty readily. We tried to respect the will of the majority." (An hour later, the Rhode Island Right to Life PAC announced it was revoking its 2018 endorsement of the speaker, even though he voted against the bill.)

Another pragmatic reality that may help explain the timing of the final votes: progressive lawmakers backing the abortion-rights legislation now have the numbers to block approval of the $9.9-billion state budget.

Spokesmen for Mattiello and Ruggerio would not acknowledge that the whip count on the budget played any role in their decisions to allow a vote on the abortion-rights bill.

But the Rhode Island Right to Life Committee blames the swirl of State House politics for its likely passage.

"These powers and principalities of the General Assembly have now completely revealed themselves as the architects and actors behind this extreme abortion expansion, all the while continuing the pretense that they are pro-life ... an historic and monstrous betrayal,'' the Right to Life Committee wrote on its website.

Here's what is happening Wednesday:

First the Senate will vote on a reworked version of "The Reproductive Privacy Act [H5125B]" -- sponsored by Reps. Anastasia Williams, Christopher Blazejewski, Karen Alzate, Jean Philippe Barros, and Evan Shanley -- that the House approved in March. If the House is still in session after the Senate vote, Mattiello said Tuesday, "We will consider the bill immediately."

The bill then goes to the desk of Gov. Gina Raimondo, who has pledged to sign it, reversing a history of antiabortion laws that date back to 1861 in Rhode Island, according to historian and Republican National Committeeman Steven Frias.

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