SPEAKER_00 0:00

Not to be maybe a punk, but are we all set, Kayla? She said it. Do we have to worry? Where are we with Governor Ayotte when it comes to abortion rights in New Hampshire? I don't know,

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Liz, how familiar you are with the political process, but sometimes when- Oh my God, I can't wait. What are

SPEAKER_00 0:15

you going to say?

SPEAKER_01 0:16

What are you going to say? I can't wait. When people are running for office, they say things, and then they get into office, and then they do different things. Okay. All right.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Welcome to New Hampshire Has Issues, a podcast that dares to ask, does anybody even care about abortion issues anymore? What do you think, Kayla? What's your tagline? Oh, I need a tagline? You need a tagline. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm making everybody do this in the episodes.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Welcome to New Hampshire Has Issues, a podcast that dares to ask, are we screaming into the void?

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Welcome to New Hampshire Has Issues, the podcast that dares to ask, when exactly did cancer screenings become so controversial? That's a good

SPEAKER_01 1:11

one. I mean, that's a

SPEAKER_00 1:18

sad one. Okay. Kayla Montgomery. I mean, my job is full-time, so there are times where I work on the weekends. Thank you so much for spending time here in our office talking about the things that we talk about at work. Thanks for having me, Liz. Thank you, Kayla. Let's start with a simple question. Do we have the right to abortion in New Hampshire?

SPEAKER_01 2:04

We do not. Shall I elaborate?

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Simple question, simple answer. That's the whole episode. We've taken weeks to record this and the answer is already no. Yeah, maybe you could elaborate just a tiny bit.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Well, the thing is, in New Hampshire, we do not have the right to abortion in our state law, our constitution, but abortion is legal up to 24 weeks. So there is a big difference between a right, a protection, and something being legal, which I'm not an attorney, but...

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Neither am I.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Yeah, but we know words.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

But we know words, and I do have student loan debt. So you might think that I was a lawyer, but I am not. Just have the debt of a loan. Just have

SPEAKER_01 2:50

the debt to prove

SPEAKER_00 2:51

it.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

We don't have the right to an abortion. It's not written into our laws. It's not written into our state law or our state constitution. Some states do that. Actually, a lot of states do that. you know, our neighbors in Maine, for example, a codified Roe, Roe versus Wade back in like, I think the 90s. So it said that it says right in the law that a Mainer has the right to an abortion. And in the state of Vermont, on our other side, they have a constitutional amendment that says every Vermonter has a constitutional right to abortion. That is the strongest way to enshrine the right to an abortion in your state constitution. Here in New Hampshire, we don't don't have either of those things. So abortion is legal, but it's not protected. So there's nothing in our state law or state constitution that says that graded staters have the right to an abortion. If there was like a scale and the restrictions were on one side, it would be heavily weighted down. But the right, if the other side was right, there'd be nothing there. So it's just silent.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Why don't we have the right to abortion in New Hampshire? It seems like the live free or die state, this would be something we would have already. And I bet people assume we do.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

So

SPEAKER_00 4:03

why don't we

SPEAKER_01 4:04

have

SPEAKER_00 4:04

it?

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Yeah, I think it's a great question. I think for a really long time, people, you know, Democrats, Republicans, Granite Staters, all believed that this was sort of decided law under Roe versus Wade and that We didn't really have to deal with this. All that obviously changed when Roe versus Wade went away, and the constitutional right for abortion was upended in our country and was sent back to states, which is where we're at right now. Every state has sort of a different law on abortion. Some advocates... saw pretty early on that Roe was a threat at the Supreme Court or in our courts in general, and started to like look at New Hampshire and be like, okay, well, we need something here. And we've tried. So Planned Parenthood certainly has tried and, you know, with working with lots of coalition partners and lots of supportive lawmakers to try to put the right to abortion down. explicitly like in black and white in our state books. But unfortunately, you know, many times we've tried that and it has not passed.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Here's a loaded question right back to you. Do we have the opposite in state law?

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Actually, Liz, we do.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

What? I had no idea that that was the answer when I asked that question. Yeah, yeah. You had no idea. No idea. It is. I mean, we don't talk about how funny it is that we have the reverse. Yeah. Turns

SPEAKER_01 5:32

out we don't have the right to an abortion.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

We don't.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

But we have this fun little law that says nobody has the right to an abortion.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Nothing. I know. Read it out. I don't have it. I don't have the exact text in front of me, but I'll link it in the show notes. But it's something to the effect of nothing in this 24 week ban gives anyone the right to abortion. Yeah. It's like, oh. So the

SPEAKER_01 5:57

opposite.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

So the opposite of the right is in a sentence in our law, it's like, no, no, you don't have that. We should get rid of that. Yeah. I wish we had tried. I wish people don't know that we're being sarcastic, but we have tried so hard. Multiple times. So many times we've tried and our friends in the state house have tried and we keep trying and. And we will continue to keep trying. We will continue to try to get that line out of there and to add an explicit right to abortion. Vermont passed a state constitutional amendment and it was a huge victory. Yeah. Good for Vermont. I know. Good for Vermont.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

A constitutional amendment has to go to the ballot. And they won every single town in Vermont. Every single town. Even ones that really strongly supported Trump. They won because abortion rights is very popular.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Abortion rights is very popular and not controversial. I feel like I hear people say that abortion is controversial. And actually, it's not. And it's not controversial in any state. But Vermont passed their constitutional amendment. And folks have asked... Why can't we do that? What's stopping us from amending the Constitution in New Hampshire?

SPEAKER_01 7:11

Every state has a really complicatedly different set of rules around constitutional amendments. And, you know, to be clear, like, amending your Constitution should be hard. If it wasn't hard, people would, you know, we don't want to be doing that all the time. It should be hard. But here in New Hampshire, it's very hard. It is just a really difficult process. It's a very high bar. You have to get to a certain threshold in each chamber, so in the House and the Senate. And then you also have to then take it to the voters. And 66% of voters have to agree to it. And 66% is a really high threshold of people to support something, anything. You know, in Florida, we saw that recently that they put... Right. Very different in

SPEAKER_00 8:05

terms of population size and media and so forth.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

Yeah. But here in New Hampshire, it might not be that. much money, but it's still the high bar. So in Florida, their threshold is 60%, and they did not get to 60%. They did get a majority. They got more than 50, but they didn't get to 60.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Yeah. In Florida, they needed 60% of the people who showed up to vote to pass it, and they didn't reach that threshold. And in New Hampshire, as you said, it's higher than that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

So it's hard. It is really, it's a difficult thing to amend the constitution. So we, I mean, people have tried, we have tried, but it is just probably not going to happen now, maybe someday. And we should definitely all keep trying for it. But through state law is certainly a good level of protection. It's more than we would have right now. Yeah. And why does this matter? Because

SPEAKER_00 9:01

every two years. Why does this matter? Why is this matterless? The podcast that dares to ask, why does this matter? I like it. Why does it matter to have an explicit right to abortion in state law or our constitution?

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Because here in New Hampshire, we have elections every five minutes, give or take.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

Give or take two years. You can also throw a stone and hit three state reps. Okay, but we're not advocating for hitting state reps. We are not advocating to hit state reps with stones. Don't throw stones. Don't hit state reps. New Hampshire has issues, but that's not how we solve them. That's not how we solve them. We don't throw things at people. You can tell our parents. I'm speaking through you to the boys right now to say stop throwing stones at each other because they're home right now and that's probably definitely what they're doing. And likely going to hit a state rep because we live near a bunch of them.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

It's true. We have elections every two years here in New Hampshire. Yes. We are a purple state, which I kind of hate that expression, but we are a state that like goes back. Do you hate purple? I love the color purple. I just.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

The book, The Color Purple. I'm just going to keep going down this path. I also love the book, The Color Purple. Very difficult. Cut it all. We're going to cut it. No, we're going to keep it. We're going to keep it. The Color Purple is a great book. You can probably no longer read it in public schools based on the DEI, but it is an excellent book and movie. All right. So we're a purple state.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

So we're a state that. tends to go back and forth when it comes to our leadership in the House, in the Senate. I was going to say the Executive Council, but that...

SPEAKER_00 10:36

Well, we have.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

We have

SPEAKER_00 10:37

gone back. We have. But what's fascinating, I think, and what people who are not from New Hampshire often don't understand, they see New Hampshire and they hear about our U.S. senators and our Congress folk, right? And those are all Democrats. All four of those individuals are Democrats. And they're all great. And they're all great. All four of them. We love them. No elected official is perfect, but I think they do genuinely try to listen to their constituents. So people who are not from New Hampshire see that we have specific folks who are in federal office, but our entire state government is Republican. So that is truly sort of a purple experience because you've got blue in terms of federal. Because blue and red make purple. Look, I'm no artist. You're not an artist.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

You're not a lawyer. What are you,

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Liz? What am I? What am I doing here? What gives me the right to be on this?

SPEAKER_01 11:33

You don't have the right, just like Granite Cedars don't have the right to abortion.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

The reason this matters is that every two years we have elections for our governor, executive council, state senate, state representatives. And so? And so,

SPEAKER_01 11:48

every two years, this is an issue. You know, there's bills that come up. There's multiple bills every year that come up that will try and, you know, tinker with abortion laws or try and regulate abortion or try and restrict or criminalize abortion. And there's nothing to stop that. There's nothing on the books that you can point to and say like, well, we can't do that. We're constantly having to deal with this. And, you know, we're constantly in a state of like biting back on these things. And The vast majority of Granite Staters don't want their lawmakers to do that. They don't want them to be doing that. And so if we could just put it somewhere, you know, in the state constitution, then we could all move on.