New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
CT Democrats say abortion rights at stake in 2022 election
HARTFORD — Seizing on a political moment of opportunity in the 25-week campaign to Election Day, Democratic State Chairwoman Nancy DiNardo joined Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz and several women vying for state office on Tuesday, blasting Republicans in general — and governor candidate Bob Stefanowski in particular — as threats to reproductive rights.
Under a marble carving of the Charter Oak on the historic State Capitol's east entrance, the Democrats made election pitches, warning that the recent draft opinion that emerged from the United States Supreme Court should be a call to political arms, and votes, for people who are concerned that the jurists might be weeks away from overturning the nearly 50-year-old Roe v. Wade abortion decision.
Stressing that reproductive freedom will be on the November ballots around the nation, they hailed the importance of Connecticut's new, so-called safeharbor law effective July 1 that will legally inoculate patients and health care providers alike from states that have criminalized the procedure.
“In politics, we talk a lot about how elections have consequences,” DiNardo said. “Well, never before has that been more clear than that is today. While Republican-led states across the country are stripping away the abortion rights, Democrats in Connecticut are defending and expanding reproductive rights. It's no longer sufficient for candidates to say they are supporting the existing law or that they believe the issue in Connecticut is settled. We are one election away from chipping away at abortion rights here.”
“Make no mistake about it, our reproductive rights are under attack,” Bysiewicz told reporters. “While other states like Texas are outlawing the constitutional right to abortion, we have enshrined Roe versus Wade into our state law and we did that decades ago. We have, in Bob Stefanowski, a person who is following the Republican playbook to reverse Roe versus Wade. He's doing what he does very well, which is to deceive voters. You can't trust Bob because he gave Donald Trump an ‘A,' for the job done governing our country. He's even urged our legislature to further restrict our Roe law.”
Earlier Tuesday, following a ceremonial bill-signing event in Bloomfield, Gov. Ned Lamont told reporters that Stefanowski, whom he defeated in the 2018 election by more than 44,000 votes, seems to leave himself flexibility, if elected, to possibly change the state's abortion laws.
“We have strong rights in this state because you've had prochoice governors and a prochoice legislature,” Lamont said. “We had a pro-choice Supreme Court that passed Roe v Wade on (a) strong bipartisan (vote). The world has changed, I don't want the world to change in Connecticut. I want to make sure that you know exactly where I stand when it comes to a woman's right to choose.”
Explaining his opposition to parental notification requirements, which the legislature has rejected several times over the last 20 years, Lamont said that the vast majority of pregnant teens tell their parents.
“I think it's been the law of the land here in Connecticut, certainly going back over a long period of time,” Lamont said. “I think it's worked pretty well. Let's face it, 98 percent of these young girls they go talk to their, it's more likely to be mom than dad in a case like that. If it's 2 percent of the cases where they don't, it's probably a very good reason why they don't. What do you want them to do, prosecute the doctor, prosecute the girl? I don't think that makes sense. I think I want to leave it up to the families. We don't need another law to solve this problem.”
A few hours after the Capitol event, Stefanowski, a former corporate executive, announced his first major news conference of the campaign for Wednesday afternoon outside the State Capitol. On April 5, outside Trumbull Town Hall, he announced that state Rep. Laura Devlin, of Fairfield, would be his running mate.
“A 15-year-old girl in Connecticut has to obtain a parent's permission to get a tattoo, but she doesn't need to notify them about getting an abortion,” Stefanowski said in a statement Tuesday night. “Ned Lamont thinks that makes sense, I don't — and the majority of parents across our state don't either. I have and will continue to support a woman's right to choose as is already codified in Connecticut state law.
Ned Lamont wants to insert government between a parent and their child — that is simply wrong and as your Governor I won't stand for it.”
After the leak of the draft Supreme Court decision earlier this month, Stefanowski's campaign stressed that the right to abortion was also codified in state law three decades ago “and regardless of what the Supreme Court decides this right will remain in effect in our state.”
Stefanowski went on to say that “Consistent with the majority of other states, Connecticut should consider a parental notification requirement for minors under sixteen seeking an abortion, except in the case of rape or incest. This requirement is already in place for most medical procedures performed on minors and abortion should be no exception.”