“Dear (Senator or Representative), my name is Althea Ansah, and I am a resident of Hooksett, New Hampshire. Recently, Governor Chris Sununu vetoed HB 685, and I am writing this letter to encourage you to uphold the veto.
We’d like to thank Althea Ansah for this Op-Ed. If you have an Op-Ed or LTE
you would like us to consider please submit it to Skip@ or steve@granitegrok.com.
HB 685, relative to insurance plans that cover maternity benefits, would require insurance companies and employers to pay for abortion services along with maternity care.
Here are some major problems with the bill:
1. Insurers and employers should not be forced to pay for a service that would go against their religious liberty and conscious rights.
2. Expectant mothers should have abortion-free options while not being encouraged to a) end the life of their developing child, and b) risk harming their reproductive and emotional health in the future. Abortion advocates use a fake name such as the “Reproductive Health Parity Act” to describe HB 685, but all it does is obscure the original purpose of this bill. Abortion is not healthcare.
3. The process of how the abortion mandate came to the session is underhanded. The original version of HB 685 sought to have insurance companies cover ambulance services (crucial in the time of a global pandemic). The New Hampshire Senate decided to replace the original language of the bill to add an abortion mandate from SB 486-FN, which passed in the Senate but not the House. That is a non-germane bill, which the House is supposed to refuse a discussion on, but they passed it anyway without a public hearing.
I ask you to uphold the Governor’s veto because women like me deserve better than abortion.”
