The New Hampshire State Senate is currently considering House Bill 228, which would ban taxpayer funding for medical institutions performing elective abortions. If the bill passes the Senate, New Hampshire will join states including Texas, Indiana, Tennessee and Kansas that have all recently restricted abortions by targeting Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers like Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
Frank McDougall, vice president for government relations at DHMC, said he is confident that the broad language contained in the bill will not survive the Senate. Even if the bill were to pass the Senate, Gov. John Lynch, D-N.H., would likely veto the bill, McDougall said.
"The bill has no future in its present form," he said. "The bill is an all-too-prevalent example of ideologically based legislation that was written and passed in a hurry without due diligence in regard for unintended consequences."
DHMC and nine other hospitals are suing the Department of Health and Human Services for violating Medicaid's budget-cutting rules and for limiting health care access to Medicaid patients, McDougall said.
"The election in 2010 brought 160 new members to the House, many of whom ran on a very conservative Tea Party platform, which involved this type of legislation and certainly their right to do so," McDougall said. "We respect the members of the House, we just strongly disagree with them."
Lynch's Press Secretary Colin Manning said that the governor supports leaving health care decisions to be made between a woman and her doctor. Manning said that federal and state laws already exist to prevent public funds from being used for abortions, but the new bill would restrict access to other health services, as well.
"Tens of thousands of New Hampshire women could lose access to important health care such as family planning, cancer screening, health education," he said. "Obviously this bill raises some very serious concerns."
Manning did not say, however, that Lynch would veto the bill.
Rep. John Cebrowski, R-Hillsborough, who co-sponsored the bill with six other House members, said he expects the Senate to pass the bill after initially "tweaking it a bit." Despite opponents' concerns that the bill will jeopardize the accessibility of community health centers to uninsured citizens, Cebrowski said the bill will have no negative impact on women's health.
"That is foolish," Cebrowski said. "The only thing it does is prohibit public funding. Why should I pay for something that's against my values and my principles?"
Expressing concern over the bill's potential impacts, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England Senior Policy Advisor Jennifer Frizzell said that this was not the case.
"We certainly have a primary concern that all the kinds of services that prevent the need for abortion will be de-funded under this bill," Frizzell said. "The underlying intent of making abortion more difficult to obtain and to have secure locations for women to receive it will only mean there are more delays and more health impacts that are destructive to women's health."
Frizzell said the bill will negatively impact the Title X Family Planning Program that provides health care for women who are uninsured and who do not qualify for Medicaid. While regulations prevent health care providers from using Title X funds to perform abortions, the program does require providers to give non-judgmental and unbiased answers to a woman's questions about her pregnancy options, Frizzell said.
The Hyde Amendment also prohibits women receiving Medicaid from using Medicaid money for any abortion-related services unless her pregnancy resulted from rape or incest, or if the pregnancy poses a health risk to the mother, Frizzell said.
Planned Parenthood health centers provide medical services to 16,000 women in New Hampshire, Frizzell said. Abortions comprise 3 percent of services provided by Planned Parenthood and are funded through patients' private funds, private insurance providers, Planned Parenthood charitable funds or loan funds.
The bill represents a broader shift in New Hampshire's "policy tradition" toward "attacks on women's health," Frizzell said.
"When did New Hampshire become the Mississippi of New England?" she said.
However, Deputy Medicaid Director of New Hampshire Lisabritt Solsky said that the bill violates two provisions of federal Medicaid law that requires states to ensure adequate access to insurance and allow willing health care providers to accept patients insured with Medicaid.
If the bill is enacted into law, the Medicaid administration will have to contact 24 of the 26 hospitals and health clinics that provide abortion services to ask them to either stop providing elective abortions or remove the hospitals from the Medicaid program, Solsky said.
The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League of New Hampshire has gathered thousands of signatures from citizens who are opposed to bills that limit women's access to abortion services, according to NARAL spokeswoman Laura Thibault.
"We have a lot of anti-women, anti-family, anti-choice legislators in this particular legislative session," Thibault said. "We are counting on the Senate to be more reasoned in their approach and to really keep the best interests of women and families in mind and also the best interests of New Hampshire in mind."
