PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - Dozens of Rhode Island state legislators have signed onto a bill to protect a woman’s right to have an abortion, launching what could be an impassioned debate in the Democrat-controlled General Assembly.
But it was one lawmaker’s deeply personal story shared at a State House rally Wednesday that was galvanizing abortion rights supporters to fight harder after years of unsuccessful efforts to get the bill passed.
Providence Democratic Rep. Edith Ajello said she was a 21-year-old Bucknell College student in 1965 when she found a doctor in Pennsylvania’s nearby coal country who agreed to perform an illegal abortion on her.
Ajello, who was first elected in 1992 and has repeatedly introduced abortion rights bills backed by Planned Parenthood that have never gotten a vote, said she felt compelled to tell her story amid fears about the policies and judicial appointments of Republican President Donald Trump.
“That’s the first time she has ever shared that story,” said Providence Democratic Sen. Gayle Goldin, who is introducing a companion bill in the Senate.
Ajello said it’s time to start reminding people about the days before the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
“Too many women died,” Ajello said. “We cannot go back to that.”
Her own 1965 procedure was safe, she said, and she came out of it “sadder, wiser and able to have children.”
The 72-year-old lawmaker pleaded for supporters to make sure her bill gets a vote this year, so that gray-haired women like her “who remember those awful days can relax about the future of Rhode Island.”
Ajello said there’s new momentum this year because of more “openly pro-choice legislators” elected in November, though anti-abortion activists believe they still hold a majority that includes many Catholic Democrats.
Thirty-six of the 75 members of the state House of Representatives have co-signed the bill that is being filed this week, but the executive director of the Rhode Island Right to Life Committee said he expects many of them to defect once they realize how extreme it is.
Proponents argue it would protect abortion rights in Rhode Island even if Roe v. Wade is overturned, but Barth Bracy, who directs the anti-abortion group, said it would allow a “complete deregulation of the abortion industry.” Bracy was particularly concerned with language that would ban state agencies from restricting “the use of medically recognized methods of contraception or abortion.”
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