N.H. Passes First Major Pro-Life Legislation

By Roger Stenson

Editor's note. Passing a pro-life measure in a state where legislation regulating abortion has never even been taken seriously is just this side of miraculous. The profiles in courage we read about in Mr. Stenson's blow-by-blow account explain why at long last New Hampshire will have parental notice.

Major Joe Kenney was on alert. His shift for duty in Iraq had been called and he was ready to serve. After all, he's a Marine and a patriot.

He's also a New Hampshire state senator, and the crucial make-or-break vote on a bill that requires that parents be notified if their minor daughter was seeking an abortion looked like it would come up after he was ordered to report to Maryland. Major Joe is a solid pro-life man. He knew that if the measure passed, it would be by a single vote. Being tugged in two directions over matters he cared about deeply was excruciating.

Kenney told his commander of his dilemma. He arranged for emergency leave, if he had not yet left for Iraq, so Kenney could fly back fast for the vote and get back to base.

Representative Robert LaFlam had been very ill. He had been out for several weeks, recovering from surgery, unable to drive. It takes a while to heal when a man has reached 71.

His colleague, Representative Dennis Fields, was in no better shape. He had fallen on a large rock while hiking. He had three broken ribs and he still couldn't drive either.

But both men are pro-life. Robert dragged himself out to his car, managed to get it into drive, and picked up Dennis. Together they drove into the State House to vote for parental notice.

The Parental Notice bill had been introduced in the House of Representatives on January 30 and assigned to the Judiciary Committee, which held a public hearing on March 7. Eleven days later, the committee met to vote. Everyone knew the result would be by one vote either way.

In the February issue of NRL News, we reported the heroics of the 80-year-old Representative Tom Rice, who was under doctor's orders to stay home. He had just had back surgery and was told not to drive. But he wasn't about to miss this vote. We got him a ride and he showed up just in the nick of time.

It is essential to appreciate that the full House had not passed a bill that came to it from the Judiciary Committee without a favorable recommendation in recent memory. Without Tom, the vote would be 10-10. Tom cast the tie-breaking vote, meaning the bill was sent on with a favorable recommendation. When the house began debate March 25, it was sharp and intense. Each side understood something potentially historic was in the wind. We won by a nerve-wracking six votes - - 187 to 181. The bill moved onto the Senate.

Our preliminary tally showed we had 10 votes out of 24 senators. The president of the Senate usually does not vote unless there is a tie. But he was known to oppose parental notice. If we got 12 votes, we still faced the specter of his deciding to vote, turning a 12-11 victory into a 12-12 tie, killing the bill.

But that was down the line. Our first challenge was the Judiciary Committee, which would hold a public hearing.

Soon, the whoppers - - bald-faced lies and distortions about the bill - - were flying fast and furious. NRLC's New Hampshire affiliate, Citizens for Life, had to get the truth out or face certain defeat.

We sent out a series of mailings that we called "Whoppers" to all senators. The whoppers/lies were printed on the top half of a single sheet, truth on the bottom half. But the lies kept coming and the press reported them as if they were objective truth. This hurt.

But it wasn't the reporters' fault. They had no way of knowing, because the lies were crafted to falsify technicalities that require the kind of intimate familiarity normally possessed only by those who are deeply involved in the debate.

That our newspaper reporters were fair and balanced was a huge victory. Thanks to their coverage, people all over New Hampshire learned for the first time that their minor daughters could be talked into and given abortions behind their backs. It was a brusque wake-up call.

We kept stressing the need for abortion reform, for sensible regulation, for protection for our daughters, for the rights of parents, and for the reduction in the number of abortions that always comes when a state passes a real parental involvement law. Babies who were pegged for abortions would live.

Planned Parenthood would have none of that.

There were cameras all over the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room on May 22. The room was so packed Senate staffers had to bring in more chairs. We had flown in Texas law professor Teresa Collett, a constitutional scholar and expert witness on parental notice. We knew she would be brilliant. She was.

We also knew the committee was stacked against us 3 to 2, but felt Prof. Collett's testimony had carried the day. What would the committee do when it reconvened to vote?

The three-member majority first amended the bill, gutting all provisions having to do with parental notice, and replaced them with substitute language that turned the measure into a toothless, ineffectual "counseling" bill. We were stunned.

But state Senator Bob Clegg is a formidable Senate Majority Leader, smart and tough. He told the committee chairman (who was responsible for gutting the bill) in no uncertain terms, "I'm going to fight this on the floor of the Senate."

We had seven days to work with Sen. Clegg and build support for the plan we had worked out. There was an initial problem, provoked by pro-abortionists who loudly insisted we were trying to "slip something by" people in the way we defined the word "abortion" in the bill.

In fact, our definition was identical to the Minnesota law which had already been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. With the able assistance of NRLC State Legislative Director Mary Spaulding Balch, this false alarm was taken care of by changing the definition in a way that satisfied two senators who had been spooked by the charges. Through all this our new pro-life governor, Craig Benson, was fantastic. When the bill was coming up for a vote in the House, he sent a letter to the Republican Caucus asking them to support his position and vote for the bill.

Gov. Benson testified in the Senate Judiciary Committee. He called several key senators into his office the day before the Senate vote. Combining natural leadership with his incisive ability to get to the crux of an issue, Gov. Benson willingly put his credibility as a first-term governor on the line because it was the right thing to do. When the bill finally came up in the Senate on May 22, the first order of the day was to kill the version passed by the Judiciary Committee, allowing a floor amendment to bring back real parental notice. We did just that.

Then the original bill was introduced (which included the new definition of abortion) as an amendment to the version passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Introduced by Sen. Russ Prescott, a long-time supporter of pro-life legislation, it passed. (We'll call his amendment "Prescott I," for reasons that will become clear in a minute.)

As expected, a pro-abortion senator introduced a horrible amendment which would gut the one that just passed. We "knew" it would lose. In fact we anticipated that it might well lose big.

In fact, it passed 12 to 11! It was over. Even though the Senate president had not voted on any of the proceedings, we had still lost. I called Mary Balch on my cell phone. She had been listening on the Internet and told me that we still had done a great job of getting as far as we did.

But I didn't want to hear it. My frazzled and fatigued mind was racing through options when the senators came back into the chamber. Russ Prescott stood up.

It is against Senate rules to introduce the same amendment twice. Sen. Prescott introduced "Prescott II," which was Prescott I with a change in the date the law would go into effect. This gave the bill a second chance to be voted on.

Prescott's brilliant move was given wings by Bob Clegg's speech in favor of it.

The tension was unbearable. We would need one of the 12 who had just voted to gut Prescott I to switch and vote for Prescott II. And we would need the president of the Senate to abstain - - again. Tall orders. But that's exactly what happened! Prescott II passed 12 to 11. I looked down at the reporters. They were exhausted. But there was more to come.

Parental notice had now passed the Senate. But even though parental notice had already passed the House, the Senate version had to go back for an approval vote (called "concurrence") because the Senate language had a different definition of abortion. Adding this new definition had been the only way to pass the bill in the Senate, but it meant a second go round in a chamber in which we had prevailed by only six votes.

The next week flew by. It was the fastest seven days of my life.

Our office sent out more mailings to the House members. We ran our third full-page ad in New Hampshire's only statewide newspaper. We sent out thousands of e-mails, referring recipients to our web site that was almost completely devoted to parental notice. Citizens for Life generated so many calls some legislators took their phones off the hooks.

And we had a secret weapon nobody else had.

Her name is Phyllis Woods and she's a state representative. She's chairman of our Legislative Pro-Life Caucus and the leader on pro-life issues in the legislature.

Phyllis Woods co-sponsored the bill and commandeered it through daunting minefields in her own chamber, and even provided support for our valorous leaders in the Senate. She was indefatigable. She called her colleagues late into the night every night.

There were times I talked with her when her voice was hoarse from fatigue. She prayed constantly and worked this bill with an indomitable will.

The New Hampshire House has 400 members, which means 32 had missed the original vote back in March. We had to keep our votes, or as many as we could, and win over some of the votes on the other side. And we had to win the majority of the votes absent from the first vote. The other side planned to make a motion to table the bill, which is not debatable. If successful, the motion would kill the bill. We beat it back 198 to 175, keeping the bill alive.

Now the vote on whether to concur with the Senate or not. There was debate, some it rancorous.

A "Yes" was a vote to pass parental notice, a "No" was a vote to kill parental notice. The House chamber has a screen, like a scoreboard at a basketball game, that shows the count.

Yes votes are in green, No votes are in red. I had to write down "Green=Yes/Pass" and "Red=No/ Kill" because I was too nervous to keep it in my head.

The speed of electricity seemed to slow for a few seconds that day. Finally, the board lit up. There were more Green votes than Red: 197 to 176. Parental notice passed, the first major piece of pro-life legislation ever passed in New Hampshire.

Senator/Major Joe Kenney is now on active duty. He had been mobilized, but was kept in New Hampshire and was able to vote - - pro-life, of course. After all, Joe's a Marine.