Kelly Ayotte. (Via Associated Press)
Republican gubernatorial candidate Kelly Ayotte is known to have an extreme record on abortion.
The former US Senator voted to defund Planned Parenthood three times, and has said that if elected governor, she would further push to defund Planned Parenthood.
In a new ad, however, Ayotte appears to claim that all is well with women’s rights in New Hampshire, noting that Granite State lawmakers passed an abortion bill “protecting the freedom to a safe, legal abortion for any reason up to six months of pregnancy.”
“Either Kelly Ayotte has never actually read the law she’s spending thousands of dollars to talk about on television or she is deliberately trying to mislead voters about her position on abortion rights,” said Kayla Montgomery, New Hampshire spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Votes in a news release. “ I’m going to say based on her history of lying to voters about her anti-choice record that it’s the latter.”
While abortion is legal in New Hampshire up to 24 weeks gestation, it is the only state in New England where abortion is not protected as a right in the constitution. In fact, New Hampshire law clearly states: “Nothing in this subdivision shall be construed as creating or recognizing a right to abortion.”
It’s notable that Ayotte has pledged to keep New Hampshire on the same track as outgoing Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, if elected to office. Gov. Sununu is known for signing the most restrictive abortion law in recent history.
Ayotte’s record also shows that she supports allowing insurers and employers to deny coverage of birth control and IVF treatments.
Granite Staters overwhelmingly support access to abortion. In a 2022 poll—the year the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade—nearly 60% of voters in New Hampshire thought the Supreme Court had made the wrong decision.
In the year following that decision, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England—which serves patients in New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont—provided almost 3,000 abortions, and saw a 12.5% increase in patients traveling to the clinic from other states to seek an abortion.
Between January and July of this year, more than 600,000 abortions were carried out in the country, with almost 1,500 in New Hampshire, according to the Guttmacher Institute..
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