The Executive Council’s rejection of state family planning contracts will lead to higher costs and longer wait times for low-income women who receive services such as birth control and screenings for cancer and sexually-transmitted diseases, providers said Monday.
The state’s all-Democratic congressional delegation condemned the Republican-led council’s action and said Gov. Chris Sununu should have done more to change the outcome.
“This is not a pro-choice governor. This isn’t even a pro-woman governor,” said U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a former three-term governor, at a virtual news conference Monday.
A spokesman for the governor dismissed the criticism as “ridiculous propaganda.”
Last Wednesday, all four Republicans on the council rejected family planning grants for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, the Equality Health Center in Concord and Joan G. Lovering Heath Center in Greenland because they operate abortion clinics.
The $298,000 in rejected grant money was to provide services from July 1 through December 2021.
The council did vote, 3-2, for family planning grants for four other care providers that don’t perform elective abortions.
Kayla Montgomery, executive vice president of public affairs for PPNNE, said the rejected providers make up 80% of the state’s family planning program, serving more than 12,000 clients.
“This defunding is serious. It is an important piece of our funding,” Montgomery said. “We are going to see impacts for our patients. Our doors will stay open … but we possibly could see cuts in services or longer wait times.”
Fees to go up
Dalia Vidunas, executive director at the Equality Health Center, said her agency will raise its sliding-scale fees for families that make up to 250% of the federal poverty level.
The program will also have to adjust pricing for sexually-transmitted disease tests, she said.
“We are looking at all our sliding-scale fees, and those changes will be immediate,” she said.
Anti-abortion groups had lobbied the council to reject the grants and praised the council’s action.
Shannon McGinley, executive director with Cornerstone Action of New Hampshire, a socially-conservative group, said Planned Parenthood's balance sheet can afford doing without family planning dollars.
"When they claim that the Executive Council is ‘defunding breast cancer screenings,’ what they are really saying is that they are going to refuse to offer breast cancer screenings unless they get to offer them at abortion clinics; so the problem is not the council," McGinley said.
"It’s that Planned Parenthood prioritizes its abortion extremism above legitimate healthcare, then willfully jeopardizes women’s health to score political points and protect abortion."
Jason Hennessey of New Hampshire Right to Life said the recently signed state budget trailer bill states no state dollars should go to a “reproductive health care facility.”
“It is unethical to force the many life-loving N.H. citizens to subsidize organizations that intentionally kill human life,” he said in a statement.
Sen. Maggie Hassan noted that as an executive councilor Sununu had once voted against family planning grants for Planned Parenthood in 2015; Sununu reversed that vote a year later and has supported the program ever since.
“Rather than listening to public health experts, New Hampshire’s Republican Party is again playing really shameless political games with women’s lives,” Hassan said at the news conference with family planning providers.
‘Absolutely absurd’
Sununu senior adviser Paul Collins said the news conference was aimed at misleading the public about Sununu’s views on the issue.
“Absolutely absurd and ridiculous propaganda. I would remind you that Chris Sununu has supported and brought forward these family planning contracts at every opportunity since becoming governor,” Collins said. “Senator Hassan hiding behind Senator Shaheen’s rhetoric is the mark of sheer desperation from a campaign consistently losing in the polls to a hypothetical candidate.”
Last week the governor said he wasn’t surprised the council rejected the grants, and was hopeful the providers will keep providing services.
Rep. Annie Kuster said Sununu bears responsibility for the ban on late-term abortions that was attached to the two-year state budget he signed last June.
“It is on his hands that physicians, and health care providers could go to jail and he tries to say he couldn’t do anything about it, it’s in the budget,” Kuster said. “What we need to convey for our constituents is who is really fighting for our constitutional rights…and who is standing on the sidelines not getting the job done.”
Rep. Chris Pappas said the Democratically-led U.S. House will soon vote for federal legislation to codify the 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision that, if it became law, would block state laws that ban abortions.
