Kelly Ayotte Launches Campaign With Lies About Abortion Ban, Reminding Granite Staters of Her Efforts to Ban Abortion

Kelly Ayotte Launches Campaign With Lies About Abortion Ban, Reminding Granite Staters of Her Efforts to Ban Abortion

Ayotte led U.S. Senate charge for national abortion ban, at odds with NH voters who name abortion rights as second-most important issue

Ayotte led U.S. Senate charge for national abortion ban, at odds with NH voters who name abortion rights as second-most important issue.

In an interview with The Pulse of NH, New Hampshire Republican candidate for governor and 2016 U.S. Senate race loser Kelly Ayotte claimed “there is no ‘abortion ban’ in New Hampshire…It’s just not true.” Under Gov. Chris Sununu’s leadership, New Hampshire passed the most significant abortion restrictions in decades, that call for civil and criminal penalties for doctors and health care professionals, including “up to seven years in prison and fines up to $100,000.” After signing it into law, Sununu himself bragged about being “the first governor in 40 years to sign an abortion ban.”

Ayotte’s comments come on the heels of another report that highlights how abortion remains top of mind for voters leading up to the 2024 governor’s race. According to independent pollsters, abortion is the “second most-named issue” in determining how Granite Staters will vote, following the economy.

“I know it’s been years since voters last rejected Kelly Ayotte, retiring her from public office, but the least she can do is get caught up to speed on New Hampshire’s laws, including the state’s landmark abortion restrictions that threaten legal action against doctors and health care professionals,” said DGA Deputy Communications Director Izzi Levy. “Whether Ayotte is this out-of-touch with the state’s current laws, or she’s purposefully trying to mislead Granite Staters because she knows her extensive record of attacking reproductive freedom and trying to advance even more extreme abortion restrictions is a non-starter, all she has proven is that she’s unfit to be New Hampshire’s next governor.”

Ayotte has a long history of attacking Granite Staters’ reproductive freedoms: in the U.S. Senate, she called for the overturning of Roe v. Wade more than a decade before the Dobbs decision, led the charge for the Senate to take up a national abortion ban, and voted repeatedly to defund Planned Parenthood. She has called a regulation requiring most employers to cover costs of birth control “an unprecedented affront to religious liberty.”

Ayotte is not alone in New Hampshire’s messy GOP primary in taking aim at Granite Staters’ most fundamental freedoms. Her primary opponent, former state Senate President and failed 2022 U.S. Senate candidate Chuck Morse, is the architect of New Hampshire’s extreme abortion ban and voted against adding exemptions for rape, incest, and the life of the child to the bill. Like Ayotte, Morse has also voted to defund Planned Parenthood, voted to allow pharmacists to refuse to prescribe patients birth control because of their own beliefs, and voted against a law that would protect patients from harassment while seeking reproductive health care.

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