Terie Norelli was a state legislator in the late 1990s when New Hampshire lawmakers passed a bill “without any hoopla” requiring insurance companies to provide “coverage for the full range of contraception for women.”
If a similar bill were to appear before legislators now, though, Norelli expects there would be a lengthy political fight.
“Not only are we not advancing on family planning issues, but we actually seem to be losing ground,” says Norelli, who represented Portsmouth in Concord for almost two decades and now works as president of the New Hampshire Women’s Foundation. “It’s extremely concerning to us … We want women to have the best possible start, and we think that begins with family planning that is affordable and accessible for women.”
It may be more difficult for women and men in the state to access those services, though. On Aug. 5, the state’s Executive Council voted 3-2 against renewing state contracts with Planned Parenthood of Northern New England (PPNNE) for family planning services. The contracts would have provided approximately $638,000 in state funding to PPNNE, which operates five health centers in New Hampshire, for health services including birth control, cancer screenings, and sexually transmitted disease tests and treatment.
“It’s shameful that three Republican executive councilors would perpetuate erroneous, politically motivated national attacks at the expense of the health care needs of their constituents.”
— Jennifer Frizzell of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England
The vote was the latest in a string of manufactured controversies that have made women’s health issues politically polarizing. In the last election cycle, abortion, contraception, and other topics were at the forefront of the political conversation, and that’s already shaping up to be the case in the 2016 presidential campaign. Though abortion and contraceptives are legal, they remain at the center of debates between mostly male politicians and policy makers.
As the next election moves closer and political rhetoric heats up, women’s health advocates in New Hampshire are concerned we’ll be having the same “debates” for years to come.
Votes and videos
Looming over the Executive Council’s vote were a series of videos released beginning in mid July by The Center for Medical Progress (CMP), an anti-abortion group. In the videos, CMP members pose as representatives of a company interested in obtaining fetal tissue from abortions. In the initial video, Planned Parenthood executives describe how the organization’s affiliates would collect fees for each tissue donation in order to help cover costs. When it began releasing the videos, CMP claimed Planned Parenthood was selling “baby parts.”
Using fetal tissue in scientific research is legal, and so are donations of such tissue. Also legal are the fees described in the video, which help cover the cost of preserving and transporting the tissue, according to FactCheck.org, a nonprofit, nonpartisan project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The videos didn’t expose any illegal activity, but that didn’t stop a national controversy from erupting.
The videos led to a failed attempt in the U.S. Senate to cut funding for Planned Parenthood. Efforts to defund the organization in individual states were more successful, though — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley have both announced their states would cut funding for Planned Parenthood.
“Serious ethical and legal questions have been raised nationally about Planned Parenthood.” — N.H. executive councilor Chris Sununu
In Concord, Republican executive councilor Chris Sununu, who represents much of the Seacoast and voted in favor of funding PPNNE in 2014, cited CMP’s videos as the reason behind his vote against funding PPNNE this year.
“Serious ethical and legal questions have been raised nationally about Planned Parenthood,” Sununu said in a statement following the vote. “There is precedent for rejecting state contracts when the applicant has been under investigation and surrounded by controversy, and given the sensitivity and seriousness of this issue, Planned Parenthood should be held to a similar standard of scrutiny.”
Jennifer Frizzell, PPNNE’s vice president for public policy, said the council put “politics before people.”
“It’s shameful that three Republican executive councilors would perpetuate erroneous, politically motivated national attacks at the expense of the health care needs of their constituents,” she said.
The council’s five members are all men — three Republicans and two Democrats. Before the meeting, Republican councilor David Wheeler referenced the videos in a letter to Gov. Maggie Hassan, in which he asked her to open an official investigation into PPNNE. Sununu, who is eyeing a run for governor in 2016, made a similar request during the meeting.
However, according to Frizzell, PPNNE does not have a fetal tissue donation program. In a statement, Hassan said, “there have been no allegations or evidence” that PPNNE has done anything wrong.
Local impact
It’s not clear what impact the funding cut will have on women and men in the Seacoast. One of PPNNE’s five health centers is located in Exeter.
Planned Parenthood health centers in New Hampshire receive about $975,000 a year in public funding, according to Frizzell, with $656,000 in federal funding and $319,000 in state funds. That money goes to providing services for women with no ability to pay for health care services. It still receives money from federal funds, private donations, and other sources. But, with the loss of state funds, Frizzell says PPNNE may have to cut programs, cut health center hours, and reduce staff, but it will take time to see what form the cuts take.
According to Frizzell, PPNNE provided services to more than 12,000 patients in New Hampshire in 2014, most of them under age 30. According to numbers provided by PPNNE, abortions make up 6 percent of the services offered by its health centers in Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire.
“You do have to have some grounds to begin an investigation. I don’t know if (Sununu) doesn’t understand that, or if it’s a cover-up for being able to not fund an organization that is considered controversial.”
— Linda Griebsch of the Joan G. Lovering Health Center
The Executive Council did approve contracts with the Concord Feminist Health Center and the Joan G. Lovering Health Center in Greenland, both of which provide abortion services.
Linda Griebsch is the director of the Lovering Health Center, which served about 700 to 800 male and female patients last year. “If (PPNNE) do hours cutbacks or … staff cutbacks, I imagine we will see an influx of patients and we’ll have to step up to accommodate that,” she says.
Griebsch is most concerned about the rhetoric surrounding the Executive Council’s vote.
There’s an “assumption that PPNNE is doing something wrong because of these highly suspicious tapes … when there’s no evidence showing anything like that has or is happening in northern New England,” Griebsch says.
“You do have to have some grounds to begin an investigation. I don’t know if (Sununu) doesn’t understand that, or if it’s a cover-up for being able to not fund an organization that is considered controversial,” she says.
Bodies and debates
It’s not just reproductive health that’s polarizing. This summer in the Seacoast, even breasts have become political. At Hampton Beach, women with the Free the Nipple Campaign have been going topless to help “expose the double standard that allows men to be topless in certain public areas … but does not allow women the same right.”
It’s legal for women to be t