By Steve Ahlquist in Rhode Island's Future
In Who Decides? The Status
of Women’s Reproductive Rights in the United States, NARAL rates
each of the states with an overall grade. Rhode Island received a failing grade
of F.
Massachusetts and New Hampshire received a C+,
Vermont and Maine a B+ and
Connecticut an A-.
Rhode Island’s failing grade makes it, to borrow a favorite
word of Speaker Nicholas Mattiello’s, an “outlier.”
The report notes that “Rhode Island enacted a measure that
restricts insurance coverage of abortion in the state insurance exchange” in
2015, a reference to Raimondo’s behind the scenes budget shenanigans that
ultimately resulted in an estimated 9000 people losing their abortion coverage
under Obamacare.
All three Democratic candidates for president are running on
strong pro-choice platforms. Hillary Clinton recently won the endorsement of
Planned Parenthood and Bernie Sanders called for an expansion of Planned
Parenthood funding, Raimondo’s mixed-choice rating puts her badly out of step
with the national Democratic Party.
As of this writing a request for comment from the governor’s
office has gone unanswered.
Steve Ahlquist is an award-winning
journalist, writer, artist and founding member of the Humanists of Rhode
Island, a non-profit group dedicated to reason, compassion, optimism, courage
and action. The views expressed are his own and not necessarily those of any
organization of which he is a member. atomicsteve@gmail.com
and Twitter: @SteveAhlquist
