Safe-harbor abortion bill passes in CT Senate
Black lawmakers raise issues of systemic racism amid debate over bill
HARTFORD — Black members of the state Senate’s Democratic caucus mounted complaints late Friday over generations of racism, threatening a bill aimed at shielding patients and medical providers from criminal and civil charges charges from anti-abortion states.
White women lawmakers rallied their personal stories to help push the legislation over the finish line.
The bill now heads to the desk of Gov. Ned Lamont, a supporter of abortion rights. If he signs the the bill, it could make Connecticut a reproductive-rights safe harbor and possible destination for women fleeing states where they can no longer receive services in the nationwide effort by conservative Republicans to prohibit access.
Although the bill prevailed with support from both parties, it will be remembered for an extraordinary divide among Democrats along racial lines — not over support of the bill, but rather over more-fundamental issues of race.
“I will not stand here and support a system that was designed to take advantage of people that didn’t know any better,” said Sen. Patricia Billie Miller of Stamford, who is Black. “I know, I’ve heard that a woman has the right to choose, that it’s her body and I agree, as my good senator stated, I agree it’s her body to choose. But my position is if we’re going to give her that choice, then let’s give her all the facts. I can’t support a system that has systemically tried to get rid of a race of people.”
State Sen. Julie Kushner, who is white, now a grandmother in her 70s, stood to recall the abortion she had in her mid-20s. Her hopes to start a family were dashed by doctors who said a medication was highly likely to cause tragic birth defects.
State Sen. Marilyn Moore of Bridgeport, who received health care at Planned Parenthood for 40 years and worked there for eight years, said she has a degree of loyalty to the organization, but her experience also illustrated its shortcomings. “What I learned at Planned Parenthood was how much racism and distrust there is in the medical system, and how health care providers turned away low-income women from services,” said Moore, who is Black.
“How women who went through the wrong door, ended up having late-stage breast cancer because they couldn’t speak English or didn’t have health insurance,” Moore said. “We get to COVID. People talk about why Black people don’t want to get vaccinated, because there has been medical apartheid. And we have experienced it for hundreds and hundreds of years. That carries over into all of this. I am struggling with friendship, with the truth and what I need to do in the future.”
Sen. Mae Flexer and Sen. Mary Daugherty Abrams, both of whom are white, reminded the Senate circle in the State Capitol’s ornate, hushed third-floor chamber that the struggle for reproductive freedom dates back more than half a century and is now threatened by the Supreme Court of the United States and conservative Republican state governments such as Texas and most-recently Oklahoma.
And Sen. Christine Cohen warned that even though Connecticut has codified abortion rights since 1990, the threat is real. Anti-choice states in the fulminating culture wars of the 2020s are creating laws that allow private individuals to win interstate bounties by naming women who come to the state for reproductive services, for possible prosecution, along with the medical professionals who may treat them.
The focus of the three-hour debate belonged to the Black Democratic lawmakers. Sen. Douglas McCrory of Hartford led the discussion on institutionalized racism that dates back before the Civil War. That position was most recently articulated during the mid-April House debate by Rep. TreneéMcGee of West Haven.
“I support women having the right, but there is something structurally wrong here,” said McCrory, who is co-chairman of the legislative Education Committee. “Gosh, people, we’ve got some issues here that we’ve got to face openly. I am going to vote yes, but there’s a lot more that we have to learn about this issue: the history; where we are now; the demographics, the numbers. If your roots are so rotten, what can you bear for me? No one has addressed that.”
The debate was led by Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, co-chairman of the legislative Judiciary Committee, Sen. Saud Anwar, D-South Windsor, a physician who is co-chairman of the Public Health Committee, as well as Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton, a top Republican on the health panel.
One key provision: The measure would expand the people who can perform the surgical abortion procedures by allowing nurse-midwives, advanced practice registered nurses and physicians assistants who are certified in the procedures to perform them at a time when the state is seeing a shortage of obstetricians and gynecologists because of rising malpractice insurance costs.
“I do not see this bill as an abortion bill as it has been labeled over and over,” Somers said. “I think we have a duty to protect our Connecticut clinicians. I do think that it is somewhat outrageous that another state thinks that it can come into our state and sue our clinicians that are performing a procedure that is legal and safe.”
Then as the Senate chamber inched toward the end of the debate, Kushner, D-Danbury, Flexer, D-Killingly, Cohen, DGuilford and Abrams, D-Meriden, reminded the Senate of the importance for Connecticut to become a safe destination for women whose reproductive rights have been taken away.
“I feel terrible that there may be women coming from Texas and other states,” said Kushner, recalling that she came of age before the 1973 ruling of the Supreme Court allowing abortion. “Voting no on this bill doesn’t end systemic racism either. There is absolutely no question that we have done things in the history of our country and the medical sciences that are abhorrent.”
At 25, married and pregnant with her first child, she got bad news at her first obstetrician appointment. “It turned out what I was taking for hives had a very high rate of birth defects,” said Kushner, today the mother of three children and the grandmother of four. “I chose to have an abortion.”
“Let’s just be clear: wealthy women will still continue to have the right to access health care, whether we approve this legislation here this evening or not,” Flexer said. “It is woman who grew up in families like mine, who don’t have access to resources - to money, let’s be blunt - who will have to make difficult decisions.”
“I think the work we have done as a state to protect the reproductive rights of women is a beacon of hope to our fellow women of this country and I don’t think we can take that for granted,” said Abrams, who had been the cochairwoman of the Public Health Committee before missing most of the 2022 legislative session because of illness. “I don’t think we can take that for granted. I don’t think that this chamber can ignore what we see happening in the rest of our country.”
“In Texas, abortions are now illegal after six weeks, before most people even know that they’re pregnant” said Cohen. “It creates a vigilante state where citizens become bounty hunters, turning in people in-crisis and turning-in the health care providers that were providing them safe and effective care. Oklahoma now has banned abortions after six weeks as well and made performing the procedure a felony. And 26 states could have strict bans on abortions in the very near future.”
In the end, just before midnight Friday, the bill passed 25-9, highlighting a three-hour debate that will likely be the most-memorable discussion of the 2022 legislative session, which ends at midnight May 4.
Democrats including Moore, Miller and Sen. Dennis Bradley of Bridgeport joined Republican Sens. John Kissel of Enfield, Rob Sampson of Wolcott, Henri Martin of Bristol, Eric Berthel of Watertown, Dan Champagne of Vernon, and Ryan Fazio of Greenwich in opposing the bill.