Many New Hampshire women say they feel angry, outraged, even threatened, after state lawmakers inserted a number of social policies, including new abortion restrictions, into the state budget trailer bill.
For many, the current atmosphere in Concord feels like a seismic shift in a state with a long history of trailblazing women.
The late Vesta Roy was the first woman to serve as president of a state Senate. She also briefly served as acting governor when Gov. Hugh Gallen died in 1982 and is recognized as the first Republican female governor in the nation.
Jeanne Shaheen, the first woman elected governor here, also is the first woman in U.S. history to serve both as governor and U.S. senator. Maggie Hassan is the second.
In 2008, New Hampshire was the first state to elect a female-majority legislative body, when 13 of the 24 state senators were women.
And four years later, New Hampshire became the first state in the country to have an all-female congressional delegation. The day Hassan was elected governor, Carol Shea-Porter and Annie Kuster won the state’s two House seats, beating two Republican men they had lost to two years earlier. They joined Shaheen and then-Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., in Washington, D.C.
But it goes back much earlier, according to Liz Tentarelli, president of the New Hampshire League of Women Voters, which evolved out of the National American Women’s Suffrage Association in 1919.
“In 1920, when women first got the vote, in New Hampshire we elected two female legislators in that very first year,” Tentarelli said.
Even though the filing period had passed by the time women were allowed to register to vote, she said, “These two women, one Republican, one Democrat, ran for the State House as write-in candidates, and they both won.
“So there’s New Hampshire,” she said.
But what’s been happening in Concord lately has stunned Tentarelli.
“I feel attacked,” she said.
It isn’t just the abortion language, she said. It’s also school vouchers and new restrictions on teaching about race in public schools that were inserted into the budget trailer bill.
“I’m angry when the processes of good government are subverted,” she said. “And I’m angry that moderate voices on both sides have been silenced.”
She’s not alone.
“It makes me so sad,” said Liz Hager, who served 13 terms in the House as a Republican and is now a registered independent.
What upsets her most? “The disregard for women in the whole abortion fiasco,” she said.
Fight over the budget
Gov. Chris Sununu signed the state budget and trailer bill into law on June 25 without ceremony.
The previous day, five women dressed as “handmaids” had joined hundreds of other protesters at a State House rally against the budget.
One of them, Deborah Jakubowski of Loudon, held a sign reading “We Won’t Go Back,” and “My body my choice,” with a drawing of a coat hanger.
“We’ve got the Republicans that say you can’t make me wear a mask and then they turn around and tell me what I can do with my body,” Jakubowski said.
Alongside her, Dr. Lyn Lindpaintner of Concord carried a sign: “Trust Women.”
“It’s a matter of trusting that mothers and women are thinking beings with an ethical right to bodily autonomy,” she said.
After signing the budget bills, Sununu issued a one-sentence statement lauding its “historic” tax cuts, property tax relief and paid family medical leave.
He made no mention of the abortion restrictions that include a new requirement that providers perform an ultrasound before any abortion, or the other controversial measures such as school vouchers and restrictions on how issues of race can be taught in public schools.
Louise Spencer co-founded the Kent Street Coalition, the all-volunteer advocacy group whose members dressed as “handmaids” at the recent State House protest.
Based on the dystopian novel and TV show “The Handmaid’s Tale,” in which the few women who are fertile are enslaved to bear children for government leaders, red “handmaid” dresses and white bonnets have become symbols of female oppression at similar protests across the country.
“To us it really illustrates this idea of taking away the agency of women,” Spencer said. “When we see women who are making decisions with their providers that are best for themselves and for the child they are carrying, and to see the government stepping in to say that they know better….”
“We recognize that elections have consequences, and majorities have consequences, but the way that the process has unfolded on so many levels this time around has really undermined what it means to be a participatory democracy,” she said.
Lindpaintner, who began her medical career as a nurse, said it wasn’t just the reproductive health language that she opposed in the budget trailer, “but that had the deepest roots in my political soul.”
“I’ve seen the impact of an unwanted pregnancy on women’s lives,” she said. “And I’ve also as a doctor seen the medical complications that can occur during pregnancy.”
It’s the way these new laws were adopted that is equally upsetting to many women with whom she has spoken, Tentarelli said. “They’re furious,” she said.
“We’ve got people who agree that abortion should be rare but legal …. and some would never consider getting an abortion and probably even work through their religious groups to oppose abortion. But this process of putting it in the budget has them furious,” she said.
“So even the most pro-life people say this isn’t the way to do it.”
And Lindpaintner asked, “If things can’t pass as a bill, how can it be OK to then put the language some place less easy to scrutinize?
“I’m just terribly, terribly disappointed in our Legislature,” she said.
Where women stand
A supporter of the No Labels movement, Lindpaintner said she believes in bipartisanship. “And then you have actions taken that make it absolutely impossible because they’re not in the realm of logic, and they’re not based on fact and they’re coming in from a national agenda, not a New Hampshire set of values,” she said.
Not so, says Shannon McGinley, executive director of Cornerstone Policy Research and its public advocacy arm, Cornerstone Action. It was an attorney for her organization who drafted the original House Bill 625 to ban abortions after 24 weeks and require that “the health care provider shall conduct an obstetric ultrasound examination” before performing an abortion.
McGinley said the ultrasound requirement isn’t really a mandate because there are no penalties for providers unless an abortion is performed after 24 weeks.
“The language was very, very carefully written to make sure that there were no ultrasounds that were required to be done in that first trimester of pregnancy because we believed that that would have constitutional consequences,” she said.
“The bottom line is we have to have some sort of objective test … that the preborn child was 24 weeks or older, and the way to do that was through ultrasound,” she said.
But Lindpaintner, the Concord physician, called the ultrasound requirement “really dangerous and cruel.”
“These ultrasounds are done in an invasive way, with a probe in a woman’s vagina,” she said. “This is being mandated by our government and it’s not necessary.”
McGinley said her organization did not advocate for HB 625 to end up in the budget. But, she said, “It was voted on in the House, and it did have a public hearing in the Senate, so I feel like it was a fair process.”
More pro-life women serve in the House than ever before, including many who were elected last year, she said. “Seven women legislators sponsored HB 625 and over 40 women legislators voted for the late-term abortion ban in the House,” she said.
“I believe that women understand that abortion has not liberated women and that we can do better than abortion for women who find themselves in a crisis pregnancy,” McGinley said.
Historical misreading
Andrew Smith, director of the UNH Survey Center, said “we have historically misread abortion as a women’s issue.”
Smith said similar abortion bills have been passed in other states. “And yes, there are many women that are upset but you’ve got to remember there are just as many women that are upset and appalled by the concept of abortion,” he said. “To make it a women’s issue has in my mind always been the problematic thing that really doesn’t describe what public opinion on abortion is.”
In fact, he said, surveys show that “women and men really aren’t that much different in their support or opposition to it.”
In a recent UNH Granite State Poll, 43% of men and 42% of women “strongly” or “somewhat” supported the 24-week abortion ban, while 43% of men and 50% of women opposed it.
The bigger difference lies in the education level of respondents, Smith said. Of those with a high school education or less, 51% supported the ban, while 36% opposed it. Among college graduates, 37% supported the ban and 57% opposed it.
Gallup polls show that both men’s and women’s views on the legality of abortion have not changed much since 1975.
The percentage of women — 41% — who identified as “pro-life” was unchanged from 1975 to 2020. The percentage of women who consider themselves “pro-choice” rose a bit, from 51% in 1975 to 53% in 2020.
However, the number of men who identified as “pro-choice” went from 50% in 1975 to 43% in 2020. The number who consider themselves “pro-life” went from 41% to 51% from 1975 to 2020.
Anticipating fallout
Hager said she was surprised at the results of the November election, with Joe Biden winning the presidency but Republicans winning across the board on the state level. She credits Gov. Chris Sununu’s popularity and his success in dealing with the COVID-19 crisis, including his weekly televised briefings.
“I think once people went over to that side of the ballot for him, they just went on down that side of the ballot,” she said.
“Hopefully they regret some of it,” she said.
The League of Women Voters’ Tentarelli wonders whether the pendulum will swing back in the next election cycle.
“That’s what usually happens,” she said. “I would not be surprised at all in 2022 to see the New Hampshire Legislature swing Democrat.”
Still, she said, “That’s not the way to govern, to change your laws every two years.”
Cornerstone’s McGinley does not believe these are difficult times for women in New Hampshire.
Women, she said, “are making a difference in New Hampshire every single day, from serving in the U.S. Senate to kissing a boo-boo — and all are equally as important and influential.”
Kent Street Coalition’s Spencer said she takes hope and inspiration from leaders such as the late civil rights icon, John Lewis, who persevered through difficult times and worked for progress.
“As we’re going into the Fourth of July weekend, the idea that in order to create to create a more perfect union, one that really incorporates the promise to all people of America, that’s what keeps me going,” Spencer said.
“That over time we really can create a more perfect union.”
