Union Leader Op-Ed: “Ayotte Rewrites Her History on Reproductive Rights”

Union Leader Op-Ed: “Ayotte Rewrites Her History on Reproductive Rights”

A new op-ed in the New Hampshire Union Leader calls out former Senator Kelly Ayotte’s lies about her votes she took in the U.S. Senate threatening in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other critical reproductive health care.

The op-ed, by Planned Parenthood New Hampshire Action Fund Vice President of Public Affairs Kayla Montgomery, comes as Ayotte shamelessly attempts to rewrite her long and well-documented record of attacking reproductive freedom amidst growing scrutiny of her extreme agenda.

Read Montgomery’s full op-ed here or key quotes below: 

• “In 2012, Ayotte voted for the Blunt Amendment, which gave insurers and employers the ability to deny coverage for any kind of care — which could include IVF, birth control, mental health care, you name it — on religious or moral grounds.”

• “…Ayotte spent her six years in the U.S. Senate greenlighting NRLC’s agenda by pushing for a national abortion ban, attacking protections for contraception coverage, voting to defund Planned Parenthood, and calling for the end of Roe v. Wade more than a decade before the Supreme Court took up the issue and overturned 50 years of precedent.”

• “Even after leaving office, Ayotte played a crucial role in the assault on reproductive freedom. After losing her reelection campaign in 2016, Ayotte was ‘honored’ to serve as the ‘sherpa’ for Neil Gorsuch’s U.S. Supreme Court nomination — which led to the decimation of abortion rights for millions of people and a hostile, anti-abortion majority on our country’s highest court, impacting generations of Americans to come.”

• “Ayotte supports our state’s current abortion ban that has no exceptions for rape or incest, includes only a narrow exception for the pregnant person’s physical health, and mandates criminal and civil penalties of up to $100,000 for health care providers, claiming she ‘would not change it.’”

• “New Hampshire remains the only state in New England without abortion rights codified into law, and will remain that way if Ayotte is our next governor, even though a supermajority of Granite Staters believe that politicians have no place in people’s personal medical decisions.”

• “Ayotte wants to leave her dangerous and extreme anti-abortion record in the past, but she’s still advocating for policies that strip Granite Staters of their reproductive rights as we speak.”

• “The truth is that Kelly Ayotte has been and will always be an anti-abortion extremist, and she will continue to try to push her extreme agenda on Granite Staters who want nothing to do with it.”

• “The future of reproductive rights in New Hampshire is on the ballot this November, and those rights are at risk if Kelly Ayotte becomes our next governor. We can’t let that happen.”

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