HB 712, a great bill which would prohibit breast surgery for minors, was unfortunately amended by the Senate last week to include text copied from SB 36. This was an abortion statistics bill which Cornerstone opposed and many other pro-lifers due to its origin from Planned Parenthood requests. It was appropriately retained by the House HHS committee earlier this session.
Though we’ve always wanted abortion statistics, this bill was a deceptive, vague bill that was legally unenforceable and catered to Planned Parenthood openly. Not only was it publicly admitted that the Senate was working with Planned Parenthood, but it can also be seen very clearly by comparing the identical propositions in the testimony of Planned Parenthood lobbyist Liz Canada and/or Planned Parenthood lobbyist Kayla Montgomery’s verbal testimony before Senate HHS.
The abortion industry is now attempting to exploit pro-lifers’ desire for statistics with this deceptive amendment, written directly by paid lobbyists for Planned Parenthood and unanimously supported by Senate Democrats.
The function of SB 36 is to give the abortionists special government privileges – favoritism enjoyed by no other sector of the medical field, and to give them the ability to use DHHS as their personal propaganda tool to lie to the public. Any deceptive “statistics” provided under these conditions will do more harm than good by providing a false foundation for policy and public opinion. The cost for these manipulated statistics will be real lives.
The amendment does not require that abortionists report the actual gestational age of the child. Even Massachusetts still requires abortionists to report the child’s gestational age.
In theory, the amendment’s penalty is a $100 fine to be imposed by DHHS. Yet our Patients’ Bill of Rights contained a similar, $2,000 DHHS fine. Dartmouth openly and flagrantly violated the law for six months—and DHHS never imposed any penalty.
Further details and explanation of the harm of this bill can be seen in Isabella Peters’ testimony.
In short, the abortion section of HB 712 now empowers the abortion industry with special powers to disseminate fact-free “statistics,” which will then be published as official New Hampshire government reports.
With no guardrails on what the abortion industry can choose to report, nor any sincere enforcement mechanism to ensure that these statistics are accurate, Planned Parenthood and its affiliates could use this law to craft and promote any false narrative on abortion that suited their political purposes.
Ideally, the abortion language in HB 712 should be rewritten into an accurate and functional abortion statistics law. Unfortunately, this is simply a tack-on effort, and the promises to “fix it next year” are not reliable. There had been previous promises to pass a well-written, working statistics bill this year that have clearly been broken.
Our goal today is for the Committee of Conference to remove this insulting, fake abortion statistics language from HB 712. This will preserve the underlying bill which we support, while removing the harmful amendment of SB 36.
If they keep this text, it would be a setback for conservatives, a special favor to the abortion industry, and an insult to the intelligence of every pro-life voter in New Hampshire.
For these reasons, it would be better to have no abortion statistics law than for the Committee of Conference to adopt HB 712 in its current form. No pro-lifer in New Hampshire wants, or will support, this pro-abortion law for the political benefit of the abortion industry!
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
🗓️ The Committee of Conference is meeting TODAY, June 17, at 4:00pm.
📩 We urge you to contact the Committee of Conference and ask that they remove the abortion statistics amendment before passing HB 712.
You can email them here:
elephantsmarching@msn.com (Rep. Wayne MacDonald)
Steven.Kesselring@gc.nh.gov
Jim.Kofalt@gc.nh.gov
Matt.Drew@gc.nh.gov
David.Rochefort@gc.nh.gov
Regina.Birdsell@gc.nh.gov
Suzanne.Prentiss@gc.nh.gov
