Concord
In Executive Council chambers filled with Planned Parenthood supporters wearing pink shirts and anti-abortion activists sporting yellow “life” buttons, the five councilors voted, 3-2, to pass $638,000 in contracts with Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, as well as the Joan G. Lovering Center in Greenland, N.H. Wednesday’s vote was a reversal of the council’s decision last year to deny funding to the organization.
Sununu, R-Newfields, who also is running for governor, was the swing vote both times.
Sununu is pro-choice on abortion rights and previously has voted in favor of Planned Parenthood contracts. However, last summer he voted to deny funding to Planned Parenthood of Northern New England as the national organization was embroiled in controversy over secret videos of national Planned Parenthood officials accused of discussing the sale of fetal tissue.
A grand jury recently cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing and instead indicted the two people who made the videos for using fake driver’s licenses to gain access to the organization’s meeting.
Sununu said the grand jury’s findings changed his mind about New Hampshire’s contract with Planned Parenthood of Northern New England.
“Those investigations are gone,” he said. “They’ve been debunked, so it’s time for us to move forward, do the right thing and make sure these funds are put out to help the women of the state.”
State Health and Human Services Commissioner Jeffrey Meyers said on Wednesday that the Planned Parenthood contract was coming up a second time because there still were unused state funds for family planning services.
In addition, the federal government is providing new matching dollars for these services, and Meyers said he hoped the state could leverage that.
“There was an additional incentive because it will be matched,” he said.
However, some councilors questioned why the vote was coming up again, less than a year after being struck down.
Speaking with reporters after the vote, Sununu laughed as he admitted the issue resurfacing was “politically inconvenient” for him.
In the days leading up to Wednesday’s meeting, Sununu had remained silent on how he intended to vote.
He said he read the contract carefully and listened to the calls and emails of his constituents before coming to a final decision.
“That’s exactly the job that I’m up here to do,” he said. “In the last couple days I think I really started mulling over what the repercussions were.”
Sununu said he wouldn’t put politics over his duty to uphold the state’s constitution and give every vendor equal consideration.
“There’s a public trust involved, and I’m not going to let politics stand between the importance of funds that go to help low-income women,” he said. “It would have been very politically convenient for me to cast a ‘no’ vote today. But that is not why the people of this state elected me as executive councilor.”
Sununu’s three fellow Republican gubernatorial candidates immediately hammered him for his ‘yes’ vote.
Within minutes of the decision, Manchester mayor Ted Gatsas issued a statement, saying Sununu had “betrayed New Hampshire taxpayers” and “turned his back on conservative grassroots activists.”
Gatsas also is pro-choice when it comes to abortion rights, but has said he believes other community health organizations can provide women’s health care.
Fellow Republican candidates Jeanie Forrester and Frank Edelblut said their opposition to the vote was more on social issues. Both identify as pro-life.
“Conservatives cannot trust Chris Sununu,” Forrester said in a news release. “He just doesn’t get it.”
The three Democratic candidates for governor, including Executive Councilor Colin Van Ostern, businessman Mark Connolly and former Portsmouth, N.H., Mayor Stephen Marchand, all applauded the result. However, Van Ostern and Marchand still took aim at Sununu, accusing him of flip-flopping and playing politics on the issue of women’s health.
Of the money approved on Wednesday, about $540,000 will go to Planned Parenthood clinics in Claremont, Keene, Derry, Exeter and Manchester. The approved funds will go to women’s health and family planning services; none of the money goes to fund abortions.
Planned Parenthood officials said the money will help the clinics hold longer hours and have more doctors available.
At the meeting, Sununu mostly kept his questions to Meyers about the state’s bidding process for women’s health services, saying he’d like to it streamlined and easier for other providers to bid on state contracts.
However, Councilor Joe Kenney, a Wakefield Republican whose district includes some Upper Valley towns, and Gov. Maggie Hassan got into a testy exchange about Planned Parenthood after Kenney suggested the $639,000 be diverted to the state’s opioid crisis and supporting mental health, rather than women’s health.
“Somehow family planning services is not the crisis of the day,” Kenney said. “I would prefer that money be repurposed toward the opioid crisis. To me, that’s where the priorities of the state are.”
Hassan noted the state legislature already has put a lot of effort into appropriating money to deal with the drug crisis.
“There is nothing in the contract before us that crowds out our capacity to address additional challenges from the opioid crisis, or to determine if we want to fund additional treatment, prevention and recovery services with those funds,” Hassan said.
Hassan added that for some women, the situation of facing an unplanned pregnancy can be a crisis.
“We try to prevent women ever from being in a situation where they’re faced with an unplanned pregnancy,” Hassan said. “To suggest that is not a crisis for an individual woman is troubling to me.”
Looking around the room at the pro-choice and pro-life activists surrounding her, Hassan said she believed that more choice for women’s health and family planning in the state would continue to reduce the rate of abortions.
“One of the things that unifies everybody in this room (is) we would all prefer if there were fewer abortions,” Hassan said.