Sponsors of 15-week abortion bill in N.H. ask to withdraw their proposal, citing unspecified ‘flaw' in the bill
'After careful review, it has become clear that there is a flaw in the bill that prevents us from moving forward in a logical, reasonable, or obvious way,' Peternel said in a statement House Republicans released promptly, without specifying the nature of the flaw.
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'Without consensus among the pro-life organizations across New Hampshire, this bill does not have the broad support it needs to advance successfully out of committee,' Peternel added.
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Republican Representative Robert J. Lynn of Windham, who chairs the committee, said a bill can be withdrawn at this stage only when all co-sponsors agree to do so and the full House votes to approve the withdrawal. Since that process cannot be completed until Feb. 6 at the soonest, the hearings on Monday would proceed as planned, he said.
The committee then heard
New Hampshire House Clerk Paul C. Smith said all the sponsors of HB 476 contacted him before the public hearing began Monday, so under House rules the request to withdraw the bill will be listed on the consent calendar for the next session day.
Representative Alexis Simpson of Exeter, the Democratic minority leader in the House, said Republicans moved to withdraw the bill after seeing that more than 11,000 people had used the committee's
'But even that didn't stop a member of their leadership from testifying in favor of the ban,' she said.
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If the GOP didn't want to 'strip away your rights,' then their members in the House wouldn't have introduced this 15-week abortion bill in the first place, Simpson said.
'Make no mistake, New Hampshire Republicans are determined to roll back your reproductive freedoms — if not today, then in the very near future,' she said.
Even before Peternel announced plans to withdraw HB 476, there was already a move afoot from a fellow Republican to change everything about the legislation.
Lynn, who served previously as chief justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court, sponsored an amendment that would convert HB 476 into a proposal to require the state to collect and report abortion statistics.
Instead of imposing abortion restrictions earlier in pregnancy, Lynn's amendment would require health care providers to fill out a form to document the 'induced terminations of pregnancy' they perform each month, with information about the patient's age, the estimated gestational age of the fetus, whether the patient had used contraception, and confidential numbers linked to the identity of the patient and the health care provider or facility.
Those who oppose the collection of such sensitive health data — lawmakers have
The committee's agenda called for a public hearing on Peternel's original bill, followed by a public hearing on Lynn's proposed amendment.
The committee, on which Republicans hold a
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There is also a separate proposal on abortion data collection,
There are several other abortion-related proposals on the legislative docket this session as well, including these:
A version of this story first appeared in Globe NH | Morning Report, our free newsletter focused on the news you need to know about New Hampshire, including great coverage from the Boston Globe and links to interesting articles from other places. If you'd like to receive it via e-mail Monday through Friday,
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