The bills’ sponsors described their proposals as narrower in scope than the restrictions on abortion-related travel that some other states, such as Idaho , are defending in federal court. But Democrats and abortion rights advocates are nervous about any new abortion-related restrictions in New Hampshire, where GOP state lawmakers are looking to use their newly expanded majorities in the House and Senate to make bold moves on policy.
One of the bills being drafted would make it a crime to transport an unemancipated minor in certain circumstances to receive abortion care without parental permission. The other would bar school personnel from transporting minor students to receive any type of nonemergency medical care without parental consent.
CONCORD, N.H. — The story of a teacher who was fired after driving a student to an abortion appointment last school year sparked public outrage in New Hampshire and now has inspired at least two Republican-backed legislative proposals.
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State Representative Glenn Cordelli of Tuftonboro, who is sponsoring the first of the two forthcoming bills, said his legislation wouldn’t apply to interstate travel and would apply only when the parents of an unemancipated pregnant minor haven’t consented to abortion services.
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“I know this is going to get attention as an abortion issue,” Cordelli said. “But I view it as a parents’ rights issue.”
Republican state Representative Kristine Perez of Londonderry, who is sponsoring the second of the two bills, said her proposal aims to protect minors who are faced with a variety of serious medical decisions.
“My concern is young people coming home having had abortions, nobody knowing, not notifying anybody,” she said. “There can be complications.”
The full text of these proposals is not yet available, and details may be amended as the legislative process unfolds, so some advocates are expressing general wariness about where these efforts might lead.
“As a state that fundamentally believes in privacy, New Hampshire should not try to control the movements of Granite Staters in accessing safe, legal health care, including abortion,” said Kayla M. Montgomery, vice president of public affairs for the Planned Parenthood New Hampshire Action Fund. Laws restricting abortion-related transportation are generally a bad idea, she said.
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State Representative Alexis Simpson of Exeter, the Democratic minority leader in the House, said the proposed bills are “deeply troubling” and send a clear signal that Republicans were insincere when they promised they had no plans to further restrict abortion access.
It’s already illegal in New Hampshire for a health care provider to perform an abortion on an unemancipated minor younger than 18 years old until 48 hours after providing written notice to the pregnant minor’s parent. But the rules differ in surrounding states. Massachusetts, for example, allows pregnant patients who are 16 or 17 to legally consent to an abortion without involving their parents.
Perez said she worked briefly as a school nurse in the 1970s, before New Hampshire’s current parental notification law was enacted. During that time, Perez said she advised young pregnant girls to talk to their parents before making any decisions that could carry short-term and long-term ramifications. That said, she supports the rights of adult students to decide whether to undergo an abortion without telling their parents.
“I believe if we’re going to allow 18-year-olds to go to war — can you tell I’m a product of the ‘60s? — if we’re going to allow that, we should be allowing them to make their own medical decisions, too,” she said.
Even if Cordelli’s proposal doesn’t apply to interstate transportation, its draft title says it would also establish criminal and civil penalties for the “recruitment” and “harboring” of an unemancipated minor to obtain an abortion without parental permission — and it’s not yet clear how broadly such terms might be defined.
A law in Tennessee containing similar language was recently blocked by a federal judge who said that state’s ban on recruitment amounted to an unconstitutionally vague restriction on abortion-related speech.
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Cordelli acknowledged his forthcoming bill likely would have had no impact on the situation that inspired it, since his legislation pertains exclusively to situations involving a pregnant minor.
“The specific circumstances in that case were a little bit different than what I’m addressing,” he said, “but it started me thinking along those lines.”
Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut first publicized the abortion-related allegation against an unspecified teacher who drove a student to an abortion clinic as part of an op-ed he published in April to defend his leadership style and make the case that the New Hampshire Department of Education on his watch has been “looking out for the children.”
The student, however, wasn’t a minor, according to the teacher and her attorneys.
In a lawsuit, the teacher alleged the state’s top education officials had spun a “misleading narrative” about the incident and knew the student was at least 18 years old. The teacher argued she had sought to empower the adult student to make her own health care decisions and agreed at the last minute to provide a ride only after the student was unable to find an alternative means of transportation. The teacher said she had food poisoning in order to take the day off from work to transport the student, and was fired for lying about being sick.
The Boston Globe is not naming the teacher at this time to protect her privacy and that of the student involved.
As lawmakers prepare to introduce these bills, the teacher whose story inspired this legislation is still wrangling with the state in hopes of keeping her license. Although her employer fired her promptly last school year, she secured a new job for the current school year. Her eligibility to keep teaching in New Hampshire came into question over the summer, as the state bungled her case.
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In fulfilling a public records request in June, an attorney for the New Hampshire Department of Education mistakenly divulged the teacher’s identity, enabling the Globe to confirm that the teacher had been fired by a nonpublic school then hired by a public school.
Ten days after that inadvertent revelation, the teacher received a notice from state officials who said her credentials had been revoked because she had failed to provide “appropriate supervision” when she took the student “to obtain an abortion” more than seven months earlier, according to her lawsuit.
The teacher’s credentials were quickly reinstated, at least temporarily, after she accused officials of failing to complete a fair and impartial investigation. The dispute then went to a hearing officer with the state Board of Education, where the proceedings were still pending, as of mid-December.
Steven Porter can be reached at steven.porter@globe.com. Follow him @reporterporter.