NARAL Pro-Choice New Hampshire Heartened by House Refusal to Allow Intrusion into Women’s Private Medical Records
March 11, 2004 Concord – Today the New Hampshire House voted against House Bill 1177, a bill that would have prohibited advanced practitioners from performing abortions – even including administering prescriptions for medical abortion (commonly known as RU-486). House Bill 1177 also would have compromised women’s and doctor’s privacy and safety by requiring health care providers to collect and submit to the state highly personal and invasive information from patients who have abortions. The information collected would have included race, age, level of education, and occupation, and indicated at what point in her pregnancy she underwent an abortion, her reasons for obtaining an abortion, and the exact abortion procedure performed. “NARAL Pro-Choice New Hampshire is relieved that the House refused to mandate the collection of highly specific and individualized information that could easily identify women and their doctors, subjecting them to harassment and intimidation by anti-choice extremists. We did support the Franklin/Craig amendment that would have collected abortion statistics in the interests of improving public health while ensuring the confidentiality and safety of women and health care providers,” said Laura Thibault, Executive Director of NARAL Pro-Choice New Hampshire. “Women in rural areas of New Hampshire would have been particularly disadvantaged by this bill because the restriction of advanced practitioners from providing abortion would have reduced immediately the numbers of abortion providers in the state. This provision was based not on safety concerns, but solely on the desire to restrict women’s access to abortion,” said Thibault.
“The legislature sent the important message by refusing to decide, on a procedure-by-procedure basis, which medical services health care providers may or may not perform.” Contact: Laura Thibault
Office: 603-228-1224
Cell: 603-978-2034
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