In Concord’s Equality Health Center, a historic home converted into a family planning facility, narrow hallways lead to exam rooms and counseling areas featuring old fireplaces.

The clinic has its quirks, but one thing in particular is a favorite to Jinelle Hobson – a framed print of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling of Roe v. Wade that hangs on the wall.

The words no longer hold legal precedent, but their message is magnified.

Just look to the election in Ohio earlier this month where voters approved a constitutional amendment to enshrine access to abortion. It’s the seventh state that has voted to protect access after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling last year.

As New Hampshire looks ahead to a race for the corner office in 2024, both Democrats vying for the party nomination hope that this issue of abortion will be a driving factor of their campaigns.

Cinde Warmington has served as the last line of defense in the Executive Council, pressing her colleagues to reverse course as they voted to reject state contracts with family planning agencies like Planned Parenthood.

In Manchester, where the largest Planned Parenthood clinic in the state is located, Mayor Joyce Craig lets her support be known.

There’s a stark distinction between these two campaigns’ messaging and that of their Republican counterparts. But there’s little difference between Warmington and Craig as they face each other in a primary – both pledge to protect reproductive rights in New Hampshire’s state constitution and eliminate any ban on abortion.

They say former U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte supported a national abortion ban and former New Hampshire Senate President Chuck Morse stands by the current restrictions that prevent abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy except in rare cases.

Ayotte has pushed back on the narrative.

“Democrats love to spread falsehoods,” the former senator said this summer on Jack Health’s radio show.

“There is no abortion ban in New Hampshire. They’ve put that forward, and it’s just not true,” Ayotte said. “Our current law actually aligns us with a majority of the states in addressing late-term abortion.”

As state Senate president, Morse helped insert the provision into the state budget that prohibited abortion after 24 weeks of gestation. Afterward, he was one of five Republican senators who voted against a change to the law in 2022 to allow abortions after 24 weeks in cases where fatal fetal anomalies are detected.

“I think the level that they’ve set abortion – that is where the public wants it to be,” Morse told the New Hampshire Bulletin.

Targeted issue

Outside the Equality Health Center on Main Street in Concord – often on Friday mornings – clinic patients are confronted by protesters as they enter the facility. Despite state and city ordinances providing a buffer zone outside of health care facilities, these policies are rarely enforced at the center’s South Main Street location, said Hobson.

This buffer zone is enforced at Manchester’s Planned Parenthood, said Craig. And it’s one protection in place for New Hampshire residents that is essential to ensuring access to healthcare.

Access to healthcare is the broader theme of both Craig’s and Warmington’s reproductive policies. By denying people the right to an abortion after a certain time frame in the state, lawmakers are restricting access to medical care, they say.

“The majority of the work that they do here is healthcare related,” said Craig, during a tour of the Equality Health Center. “Communication is so important so that people understand what is on the line here … making sure that our elected officials understand that they are very well putting lives at risk by not funding health care for individuals within our state.”

That has been a key tenet of Warmington’s stance in the Executive Council chambers, as she spars with Republican colleagues over their repeated choice to reject family planning contracts as the lone Democrat at the table.

These contracts will come in front of the council again for a fifth time, as early as the next meeting on Nov. 29.

By rejecting these contracts, the council is interfering with a clinic’s ability to provide cancer screenings, breast exams, pap smears and contraception, among other services, she said.

“All of these things that go to the health and well-being of the people of our state and the most vulnerable people of our state, many of whom will not even access primary care services other than to go to a family planning clinic,” she said. “This is for so many people, this is such a critical service, and it is being defunded based on an anti-abortion ideology of other counselors, and it is just plain wrong.”

The repercussions of these Executive Council decisions fall in the laps of the cities and towns, like Manchester, that host these family planning sites, said Craig.

“I partner with Planned Parenthood to make sure that their needs are met. If they’ve ever encountered issues we have taken care of them right away. So I’ve been very proactive and responsive to their needs,” she said.

New Hampshire law

New Hampshire is an outlier among New England states when it comes to reproductive freedoms, according to both candidates.

Last year, Vermont voters approved a ballot question to protect the right to an abortion in the state constitution. In Maine, abortion is legal throughout pregnancy but requires a physician’s approval “after viability” – which means when the fetus is able to survive outside the uterus with medical assistance. In Massachusetts, the procedure is legal up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, after which it is allowed only for fatal fetal anomalies or health risks of the pregnant person.

Abortion is protected under state law in both Maine and Massachusetts.

In the Granite State, abortion is also legal through 24 weeks of pregnancy. However, what sets New Hampshire apart are the civil and criminal penalties in place – up to 7 years in prison and $100,000 in fines – for providers who violate the law.

This distinction is what alarms Warmington.

“We created a situation where it’s dangerous to be pregnant in our state, and it’s dangerous for specialists in this area of medicine to practice in our state with their licenses or their liberty at risk,” she said. “That is what is so very dangerous about the current abortion ban that really needs to be overturned, rejected and replaced with access to safe and legal abortion in our state.”

A bill to remove these penalties passed the House but was voted down in the Senate along party lines. It was one of several abortion-related bills – with Democrats hoping to enshrine the right to an abortion into state law and repeal current guidelines, while Republicans looked to tighten restrictions by banning the procedure after six weeks or instating a 24-hour waiting period.

All measures failed, but they signal to Craig a continued battle within the State House. To her, the governor’s office is the last line of defense.

“We did see some very alarming bills come out of the State House last session, and with a governor who has historically shown that or has not said they wouldn’t veto something like that. There is a chance that there could be many more restrictions moving on,” she said. “The governor’s office is a last stop right now.”

On the campaign trail, both Warmington and Craig are visiting family planning centers for conversations on reproductive rights. In November, Craig visited the Equality Health Center in Concord, while Warmington toured the Lovering Health Center in Greenland.

And in these conversations, both candidates have a clear message at the forefront of their campaigns – if elected they would work to protect the right to a safe, legal abortion in the state.

“What we see across the country is that women need to be able to make their own reproductive health care decisions. This has been a constitutional right in our country; it was for nearly 50 years. And we have, for the first time in our history, a Supreme Court that took away a fundamental right,” said Warmington. “People across the country are standing up against that.”