Demonstrators pro and anti lined the sidewalks. I chose a pink sign for drivers speeding by, ‘I Stand With Planned Parenthood’. The antis had their own signs in the same color and typeface, ‘Stop Planned Harvesthood’. Although the allegations against Planned Parenthood were unfounded and the makers of the ‘sting’ video are facing charges true believers are not letting go. You can’t argue with faith.

As I stood by the curb, a procession approached- a tall man with white hair and a woman wearing a bandanna adorned with marijuana leaves. They were carrying banners with the Virgin of Guadalupe and the man was blowing loud blasts on a long curly rams’s horn. I recognized them from Facebook. “Are you the Church of the Holy Herb?” I asked. Yes, and they were here to add their voice to the anti-abortion side. Strange bedfellows.

Although it was hard to hear the antis on the other side of the busy street they did their inevitable co-opting of the Civil Rights struggle, singing ‘This Little Light of Mine.’ I doubt they know that Dr.King was given the Margaret Sanger award by Planned Parenthood in 1966.

An anti-abortion protester had a body camera on his shirt. He said it was in case he was “assaulted again”.

A woman was carrying a sign that said, ‘I regret my abortion’. A consequence of making choices is the risk of choices you regret. Tell me about it. I would support her right to join in a moral debate but not to try to make abortion illegal for all women.

A man was carrying a sign that said, ‘Hillary Kills Babies’. You really don’t get used to words like ‘baby killer.’ As a mother, as a nurse, as a woman who advocates for the rights of women and children, especially those with disabilities, it is painful to be labeled as a supporter of baby killing. This whole bizarre performance was happening within blocks of Women&Infants Hospital and Hasbro Children’s Hospital where lives are saved every day. The Catholic Church in RI has some good people and charities, but their leadership reliably supports politicians who undermine vital services for women and infants because they are PRO LIFE.

As I left the demonstration for a darkened room and some Motrin I saw the woman from the Church of the Holy Herb nose to nose with one of the prolifers shouting about sperms and eggs. You guys deserve each other, I thought (no offense to The Herb).

That afternoon, Hillary Clinton was scheduled to speak in Central Falls, a miniature city famous for Viola Davis. I wanted to see for myself what crowds Hillary could draw. My Facebook friends were posting pictures of hordes for Bernie and dismal empty function rooms for Hillary.

The line outside Central Falls High School 45 minutes before door opening was long but I figured I had a shot, they said that 1,200 would get in. Major politicians, like rock stars, are always late, and I had nothing much to do except look at the crumbling Victorian house across the street fantasizing how I would renovate it if I won the lottery. There were a lot of people in line wearing union t-shirts and we had some friendly words, but I was facing an hour at least just standing there. Some nice looking young men were handing out tracts. I eagerly accepted the reading material.

Such 16-page, glossy 8×10 4 color doesn’t grow on trees, and headlines like ‘Fugitive Pope’,’Sodom and Gomorrah’ and ‘Brace Yourselves’ did not disappoint. Apparently the Vatican, the CIA, the IRS, Nazis and The Illuminati are working in close coordination. I’d love to know how they manage that when Progressives de-friend each other over who to vote for in November. Anyway, Tony Alamo or his disciples are still finding money to print these tracts in 2016, despite the fact the the Reverend himself is said to be a grifter. and serving time for sexual abuse of children.

Who were these guys, and why are they in Central Falls?

Having been dragged sideways in my teens through a Pentecostal church I respect the power of the non-rational. Great ideals can bring out the best and the worst in us. The anti-abortion protesters at Planned Parenthood really believe they are defending children. They claim the righteousness of Martin Luther King, not knowing he was a pragmatist who had to minister to real people in the world we live in. As his power increased the moral complexity of decisions he had to make increased as well.

My friends who support Bernie have many valid points to make for why he is the best candidate and legitimate criticisms of Hillary Clinton. But some of them have casually re-posted junk from Right Wing sources whose only goal is to divide and conquer.

I don’t have to be psychic to predict that the same people who claim the Pope is chugging beers with The Illuminati will declare that Hillary is the Whore of Babylon. It’s only a crackpot few who will state it in those terms, but there is a Christian majority in this country that will hear the dog whistles. And they just ‘wont trust’ Hillary.

The Providence Journal said Hillary got about 1,000 supporters though the gymnasium with a capacity of 1,200 was packed like sardines (I was there). Bernie got 7,000 at Roger Williams Park the next day, to the credit of his message and hard-working and dedicated supporters.

I am hoping that the Democratic Party will offer a unified and powerful message to voters in November. It’s a certainty that the non-rational will have a strong voice in this election. It’s not only hearts, it’s brains we will have to win.

When I was at Hendricken, there was something called the Irish Club, a group of students and faculty that engaged in an after-school celebratory discourse about Celtic Catholic spirituality and culture. We would from time to time touch on the tremendously fraught issue that is the Irish Republican Army. The overwhelming opinion was that, even though the IRA was right in its aims, they were wrong to launch attacks in a fashion that resulted in civilian casualties. Leaving aside my own further intellectual development since I discovered the works of Frantz Fanon, the reality is that one can and should apply this logic to the murder of people at a women’s clinic.

Anything less than a full-throated rejection of an act of religiously-influenced domestic terrorism on par with the violence of 9/11, including modifying phrases that condemns the activities of the victims, is the stuff of cowardice. If a school should be involved in such acts of cowardice, their ability to be serviced by taxpayer-funded free school bussing should be revoked, as should the supply of taxpayer-funded text books in math, science, and other subjects. If we are going to have some individuals harping and howling over whether President Obama was taught in a radical Muslim madrassa in Indonesia, we are going to hold Catholic education to the same standards while remembering that Osama bin Laden was also opposed to abortion rights.

One of the lessons that I took from 9/11 that I think very few others likewise took was understanding why that event happened. Some would call this a Left position, others an anti-American position, but I call a logical and educated position. Those attacks were not random acts, they were a violent climax of events over decades involving American military force in the post-colonial world. From the bloody vistas of Vietnam to Jimmy Carter’s idiotic policies in Afghanistan and beyond, America planted hateful seeds abroad that blew back onto our shores and killed civilians.

We should be wise and apply this logic herein. This violence was not random, it was a violent and bloody culmination of years of a coordinated series of anti-choice actions that the media has refused to cover or failed to properly dissect in the name of their farcical ‘objectivity’. Clinics nationwide have been closed over the past several years with a series of Kafkaesque building codes. For months, there have been arson attacks on women’s healthcare clinics that have not been front page news on the Providence Journal (do not even get me started with their misogynist coverage of this violence). The farcical and utterly transparent videos produced by anti-choice scoundrels this summer are now confirmed to have fueled this madman’s violence and that vanguard of objectivity, Edward Achorn, printed letters and columns in his editorial pages that furthered those lies. I would not hesitate to show him as much contempt as some of his colleagues have shown for Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning (though the fact is that they were telling the truth whereas Achorn was promoting lies). The trail of tears leads to many doorways, including his. No longer can he talk of concerns about promoting terrorism in the Arab world without having this held over his head.

Let us consider for a moment the odious Bishop Thomas Tobin, whose war against women included his Know-Nothing rally at the doors of Planned Parenthood last summer. I would respect Bishop Tobin if he was actually serious about protecting children, but considering how he continues to give soft glove treatment to Bishop Emeritus Gelineau while the man has reams of testimony against him regarding sexual abuse of minors (here, here, and here), I would trust Charles Manson to protect a youth before I trusted Bishop Tobin. What is more, he is a publicly-registered Republican and actively opposed the Affordable Care Act, a law that provides the very contraceptive care that can prevent unwanted pregnancy and therefore abortion. If the Church opposes contraception, fine, that is the realm of moral instruction of membership. But when you get into actively lobbying against public policy, that is a wholly different realm. The Providence Diocese for a long time now has ceased to be a purely religious body and become the politically lobbying Grand Old Diocese, or GOD. This is such a transparent farce that the Three Stooges would blanch in embarrassment.

But there is plenty blame left. What about our allegedly pro-choice Gov. Gina Raimondo, who threw women under the bus this year at the whims of the aforementioned Republican Diocese? Can we call this rolling over for both the opposition party and the Church that took her picture off the walls of LaSalle Academy anything but a terminal lack of backbone? Why is our democracy allowed to be controlled by a body that fails to pay taxes, shelters child abusers, and supports terrorism? Are all the women of Rhode Island worth a quickie compromise with these fools? The precedents she has created are deadly and fed into this madness.

Yet the ultimate amount of guilt lies with ourselves. We failed women. We were unable, unwilling, or uncaring enough to take these warning signs serious enough. We should have been more full-throated about this than a bickering fest about a baseball stadium. In the days before 9/11, the record shows that a select few government employees were running around Washington like their hair was on fire, begging the Bush administration for attention. Were there such figures in the Ocean State landscape I missed? Steve Ahlquist has been one, his coverage of the Raimondo legal moves have been admirable and is going to be used as primary sources by future historians. But was there a Richard Clarke on hand telling we alleged feminists to watch out? Why were we not like he was? To quote the Bard “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but ourselves.”

After this, every reproductive healthcare center should be under the same level of protection that T.F. Green Airport is. After this, we should quit worrying about Syrian Muslim terrorism and start worrying about American Christian anti-choice terrorism. After this, we should be more vocal and saying that abortion accounts for only 3% of Planned Parenthood medical care and the rest is focused on low-cost healthcare for men and women, including contraceptive, cancer, and STI testing/treatment care, medical care that would otherwise be unavailable for many of their patients. We should vocalize that, prior to the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, the largest killer of women of child-bearing age was septic abortion, more than car accidents or cancer.

If moral absolutists are going to argue that they do not want their tax dollars funding abortion, they should be as vocal about funding our murderous, child-killing military-industrial complex and be pro-life regarding Palestinian children. Yet the only religious group I know of that does that is the generally pro-choice Quakers. Are Catholic Bishops willing to use the same condemnatory tones used towards those who help procure abortions with Catholic soldiers and threaten automatic excommunication for drone killings, especially since the revelations by The Intercept and other publications reveal the targeted assassinations program has killed so many innocent children?

I write Hendricken ’05 on my pro-choice petitions to our Congressional delegates because Jack Reed is a Catholic and James Langevin went to Hendricken. I write Hendricken ’05 on my pro-choice petitions because, once you void the privacy of the doctor’s office, you create a slippery slope that could void the privacy of the Catholic priest’s confessional due to the fact clergy and medical personnel are protected by the same statutory logic. I sign Hendricken ’05 because I oppose terrorism. I sign Hendricken’05 because I believe women know better than anyone else what medical care they need and that the patient is always the best advocate for their care, not priests. I sign Hendricken ’05 because I respect the female teachers at Hendricken. When I was a student, there were instances where male instructors would sometimes talk about the ‘morality’ of regarding why some of these teachers did not have a large number of children, behavior showing of a lack of respect for these women that screams Human Resources complaint. But I also sign Hendricken ’05 because I believe in sanity, secularism, feminism, and maturity and do not believe in governance by religious fundamentalism. It was John Adams who said “The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

Finally, I sign Hendricken ’05 because all Hawks are quality one, even if they are pro-choice. By pro-choice, I do not mean I push my sexist nose into the doctor’s office to observe all the activities therein. Rather, it means I respect when that door closes and do not dare open it ever lest I have the same be done to my mother, aunt, grandmother, sister, or female friends. This is the kind of respect I also express for the Seal of the Confessional.

Those who tell you that being pro-choice automatically means being in favor of abortion are lying. It is the complete opposite. Being pro-choice means not being in favor of anything a woman chooses to do in her doctor’s office because it is none of your business, period. Being pro-choice also means opposing state-mandated abortion, such as the Chinese one-child policy, because a law like that strips a woman of her agency and intrudes on the relationship she has with her doctor. Men are not subjected to the level of regulation and scrutiny when they choose medical care that I might not agree with, ergo a woman is due that same level of respect. Refusal to grant that is defined by an SAT vocabulary word, misogyny.

We counter-demonstrators stood across the street from the prohibitionists. They had signs made up in the same shade of pink used by Planned Parenthood. They had pictures of fetuses from which the woman was disappeared. They had a sound system, which mercifully did not go up to ’11’. It was a nice, sunny day and standing on the sidewalk for two hours gives you time to think. I thought about how I would really like to be standing with the people on the other side of the street, talking about how to help young people learn about, as former Surgeon General David Satcher put it, responsible sexual behavior.

I’d like to talk to the prohibitionists about the benefits of sex education, and not just for young people. We could be grateful together that access to reliable contraception through the Affordable Care Act is helping to reduce the rate of unwanted pregnancies. I could tell them that their crisis pregnancy centers could be a real force for good if they came clean about their intentions and committed to really helping women who wanted to have a baby in difficult circumstances – help that would be needed even more after the baby is born.

But the Catholic Church is fighting in court to remove contraception from their employee’s health insurance. The prohibitionists redefine contraception as abortion, claiming that a sperm might meet an egg and contrary to science and without any Biblical basis define that as pregnancy. And when the demonstrators across the street started a chorus of ‘We Shall Overcome’ I knew that the prohibitionists had redefined themselves as abolitionists. Somehow they co-opt the appalling suffering of millions of innocent women who labored in the agricultural prison camp known as the Old South. They casually appropriate the history of women who had no legal protection for their own bodies, whose fertility was a commodity and whose children could be sold away or abused in any way with no recourse. We have not even begun to repent as a nation for those sins, but let’s not dwell on that when invoking Dr. King as if he would have endorsed the prohibitionist cause.

In fact, Dr. King was given the Margaret Sanger award by Planned Parenthood in 1966. Dr. King was not able to attend, so Coretta King accepted the award on his behalf and gave his speech, Family Planning – A Special and Urgent Concern.

Rosa Parks, whose political activism has been downplayed in the popular story of her bus protest was a supporter of Planned Parenthood and served on its Board of Advocates.

Margaret Sanger has been characterized as a racist, and some prohibitionists put out the appalling slur that ‘The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb.’

What does this say to black women, whose rights have so often been denied, who have been blamed for every social ill that inequality brings? Misogyny, racism and social discrimination complicate what is already a crisis- an unwanted pregnancy.

The writer and activist, Angela Davis, affirms the right to contraception and abortion “when necessary,” while holding our society accountable for forced sterilizations and other abuses inflicted on women of color. The label, ‘pro-choice’ goes both ways, including supporting women who want to continue a pregnancy and supporting the right of women to be fully informed and free of coercion.

Faye Wattleton, past president of Planned Parenthood, was the first African-American, the first female and the youngest president of the reproductive health-care organization.

In 1966, Wattleton moved to New York City to attend Columbia University, where she pursued a master’s degree in maternal and infant care. But it was also in New York City that, while completing an internship, she witnessed firsthand the suffering—and sometimes fatality—caused by illegal and unsafe abortions during an internship.

The womanist writer Audre Lorde, in her autobiograpy Zami-A New Spelling of My Name, tells her own story of the crisis facing her as a college student pregnant and abandoned.

Cheap kitchen table abortions. Jean’s friend Francie had died on the way to the hospital just last year after trying to do it with the handle of a number 1 paintbrush. (p.107)

She was fortunate to find a competent nurse who safely terminated that pregnancy and she later married and had two children.

When I attended CCRI school of nursing in the late 80’s the nurse lecturer recounted the desperate lies women told in the ER to try to get a D&C. She played it for laughs. No compassion there, but later in class a woman quietly spoke of her friend who injured herself so badly trying to terminate a pregnancy that she was left sterile.

Unsafe abortion is a major cause of injury and death to women worldwide. This was our past and we should not re-create it.

No freedom is absolute, but prohibitionists claim a moral right to override the conscience of the pregnant woman and impose their ideas of right and wrong.

The prohibitionists, in their mix of religion and politics, try to block access to contraception for the least privileged women. They are trying to shut down promising programs that are showing results in reducing unwanted pregnancy and abortion. Who profits from this situation, except politicians looking for an issue to inflame the base?

And the good people across the street in their zeal to outlaw abortion ally themselves with politicians who tax the poor to profit the rich. They may sing ‘We Shall Overcome’ but overcoming the inequality that actually does kill babies- with our shameful infant mortality rate, is not on their agenda.

It’s no contradiction that Dr.King supported Planned Parenthood. He knew that blocking access to contraception prevents women and men from having agency over their lives. Prohibitionists are not the spiritual descendants of the abolitionists but the opposite- a regressive attempt to subject women to the dictates of the church using the power of the state.

The rally was organized by Jessan Dunn Otis, who spoke about how important Planned Parenthood has been in her life. RI State Senator Gayle Goldin briefly attended.

Below you will find video of women speaking about the importance of Planned Parenthood in their lives and for women’s health, followed by some comments by James Rhodes, director of public policy & government relations at Planned Parenthood Southern New England. Lastly, I included the men who spoke at that rally.

Ninety-five years ago on August 26, women fought for and won the right to vote. This victory came after decades of defending our intelligence and capacity to make informed decisions, a struggle that continued for many women long after the right was won.

2015 sure feels like déja-vu.

More than ever in recent history, a woman’s ability to govern her own body is under attack. We are tired of the intimidation tactics and malicious statements being made in an effort to turn back the clock on hard fought wins towards equality. We urge all of you who stand for equality to denounce the recent attacks and false claims made against Planned Parenthood. Freedom of religion provides the right to practice your faith without harm; it does not allow individuals to dictate the health decisions of others. Any effort to limit women’s access to health care is a threat to women’s health and their autonomy.

At Rhode Island NOW, we take action to bring women into full participation in all aspects of public and private life without experiencing barriers based on gender, and that includes any barriers to adequate health care. We are not here to address the slander against Planned Parenthood being perpetuated by political activists with feign concern for women’s health. We are here to remind everyone of the facts and the value Planned Parenthood provides to the community.

The vast majority of Planned Parenthood’s resources are spent on providing general health and wellness services, including: screenings for cervical, breast, and ovarian cancer, physicals and checkups, prescriptions for contraception, and testing and treatment of sexually transmitted infections, which avoids infertility later in life and ensures healthy pregnancies. To claim federal and state dollars are being used for abortion services is completely false. Under federal and Rhode Island state law no public money can be used for such services, therefore all public dollars given to Planned Parenthood go directly to the essential preventive health services laid out above.

It’s ironic. The “pro-life” lobby is surprisingly disinterested in these lives: millions of women, men, and (yes) children are alive and healthy because of the resources Planned Parenthood provides every day. A vote against this agency isn’t a blow to the ominous, faceless threat of abortion. It’s a direct hit to the health of our communities: our neighbors, families, and friends.

The war on women in America is real. The reasons behind it are about power and control, not the health or the well being of women. Rhode Island NOW trusts women, and we trust Planned Parenthood. We stand with them and applaud them for the care and counsel they provide to millions of Americans every year.

*Kate Gorton is a Rhode Island NOW member, writer, and blogger.

• As I watched the demonstrations, I wondered if Bishop Tobin was aware that the videos presented to the public by the anti-choice group Center for Medical Progress, the videos that inspired these protests, are hoaxes made to fool gullible people? These videos are amateurishly edited lies, as any Google search will show. (See: Snopes, Wonkette, MediaMatters and LittleGreenFootballs) Could the Bishop have checked the Internet before continuing to spread false witness?

• I wondered if Rhode Island Catholics are aware that under the leadership of Bishop Tobin, the Providence Diocese has made a habit of teaming up with extremist anti-LGBTQ hate groups? The national sponsors of the “Day of Protest” against Planned Parenthood included:

–American Family Association is listed as a hate group with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). For just a flavor of the sickening things this group has said, I’ll supply one quote from Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis for government and public policy: “Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews.”

–Family Research Council is also listed as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the SPLC, whose senior Fellow for Policy Studies, Peter Sprigg, said, against all evidence to the contrary, that, “We believe the evidence shows … that relative to the size of their population, homosexual men are more likely to engage in child sexual abuse than are heterosexual men.”

-Besides the SPLC identified hate groups, the Planned Parenthood protest event was also backed by Operation Rescue, which has been linked to violent anti-choice extremists.

-Saturday was not the first time Tobin has sided himself with extremist hate groups. In 2013, Tobin gave his blessing to FAPSMEG, an anti-marriage equality coalition that counted MassResistance, another certified SPLC hate group, among its members. MassResistance executive director Brian Camenker even came to RI to testify against marriage equality as part of the coalition.

Do Rhode Island Catholics really want to be allies with hate groups?

• Is the general public aware that the Catholic Church doesn’t simply oppose abortion, they also oppose most common forms of birth control such as condoms, birth control pills and IUDs? At least one group sponsoring the Planned Parenthood protests, the American Life League, (ALA) is opposed to “abortion under any circumstance” and “all forms of contraception, embryonic stem cell research, and euthanasia.” The ALA is “the largest Catholic grassroots pro-life organization in the United States.”

Now, this might be a fine way for believing Catholics to live, but the Church would see its beliefs imposed on everyone, through law. America, and specifically Rhode Island, was founded on very different principles. Here, we separate church and state.

• The Catholic Church in Rhode Island pays no taxes, yet exerts an out-sized influence on Rhode Island’s politics. At least three state legislators were outside Planned Parenthood with the protesters. I saw Representatives Raymond Hull, Robert Lancia and Justin Price. We should ask ourselves: How are laws shaped by Catholic theology fundamentally different from sharia law?

• Women’s rights to privacy, medical care and freedom of conscience are under attack across the country. The ugly manifestations of this are starting to be felt in Rhode island. Governor Gina Raimondo, who sought the endorsement of Planned Parenthood, has shown herself to be no champion of reproductive rights. Rhode Island has a proud tradition of standing against intolerance, fear and ignorance. When will we demand leadership that will stand against these pernicious attacks on our fundamental freedoms?

With this in mind, I hope you will join me in making a donation to Planned Parenthood.

Much like its House counterpart, the Senate Finance Committee passed the FY16 budget bill unanimously with almost no discussion other than to speak on its merits.

“I would certainly characterize this budget as one that is not only ambitious, but one that makes a significant investment in areas that should have been invested in in the past,” Chairman Daniel DaPonte (D- District 14) said to begin the meeting. He added in a press release that the budget helps to put Rhode Island back on the right track economically.

“This is a budget that Rhode Island’s economy needs and through its passage will continue the economic stability and reform that delivers the message that Rhode Island’s economy is back and open for business.”

One of the short discussion points brought up during the meeting was whether or not the budget provided opportunities for youth.

“There have been some pockets that have been filled here, but I suggest that next year we consider providing more job opportunities for youth,” Senator Juan Pichardo (D- District 2) said.

DaPonte agreed with Pichardo, but also reminded the committee that there is no one specific way to keep youth working in the state.

“I think initiatives to focus on keeping young people here and getting them up and running are incorporated in the budget in a variety of different places and a variety of different ways,” he said. “I think the sum of all these parts is a statement to us not only wanting to keep these folks here, but increase the number of opportunities available.”

The night before, the House of Representatives was very kind to the bill as well, passing it through to the Senate after a swift three-hour session. Before its passage, many took the time to thank not only House Finance Committee Chairman Raymond Gallison (D- District 69), and Speaker Nicholas Mattiello, but the House Fiscal Advisory staff as well.

Other groups outside of the State House are also pleased with the budget. Planned Parenthood, which fought against the restrictive abortion insurance coverage in Article 18, said in a press release that they are pleased with the outcome of the bill.

“While we were disappointed the governor unnecessarily chose to widely expand the number of plans that do not cover abortion beyond federal minimum standards, the action by the General Assembly today ensures employers cannot unilaterally limit reproductive health care service coverage for their employers. This amendment will require employers and insurance carriers to clearly indicate when an employer is opting out of covering certain reproductive healthcare services, so that no one will be surprised by a lack of coverage for routine procedures.”

But, while many have championed the budget as a success story, there are still those that are dissatisfied. Common Cause Rhode Island, an advocacy and lobbyist group for transparent government, has expressed discontent with the budget’s provision for Governor Raimondo’s pension settlement.

“This extraordinary legislation, that will affect every Rhode Islander – and every Rhode Island state and municipal budget – for decades, should not be rolled into the annual budget as if it were just another article,” said executive director John Marion. “The budget debate that typically occurs in a single evening and includes debates on amendments concerning dozens of issues is not the place for this important legislation. It deserves special consideration so legislators, as much as they did in the special session in 2011, can take this up on the merits alone.”

The 2016 RI State Budget, approved by House Finance late Tuesday evening, included language on abortion coverage in its section on HealthSource RI funding that goes far beyond what is required under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This part of the budget, inserted at the request of Governor Gina Raimondo on May 29, replaced article 28 of her original budget which the General Assembly changed to Article 18 in its final version.

The part that pertains to abortion coverage reads:

(3) Any health plan that delivers a benefit plan on the exchange that covers abortion services, as defined in 45 CFR section 156.280(d)(1), shall comply with segregation of funding requirements, as well as an annual assurance statement to the Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner, in accordance with 45 C.F.R. sections 156.280(e)(3) and (5).

(4) At least one plan variation for individual market plan designs offered on the exchange at each level of coverage, as defined by section 1302(d)(1) of the federal act, at which the carrier is offering a plan or plans, shall exclude coverage for abortion services as defined in 45 CFR section 156.280(d)(1). If the health plan proposes different rates for such plan variations, each listed plan design shall include the associated rate.

(5) Health plans that offer a plan variation that excludes coverage for abortion services as defined in 45 CFR section 156.280(d)(1) for a religious exception variation in the small group market shall treat such a plan as a separate plan offering with a corresponding rate.

The ACA requires, by 2017, that a Multi-State Plan not covering most abortions be offered on every state-based health exchange. The language above mandates that every insurer operating on HealthSource RI offer multiple plans that do not cover abortion. The budget in its current form does not require that insurers offer plans to cover abortion, so any insurer not interested in offering nearly identical plans may decide to drop such coverage altogether.

The federal mandate that requires at least one plan that does not cover abortion should more than adequately cover those with a well-founded religious objection to abortion so that they can find a health plan to cover their needs.

I have made two requests to the Governor’s office, asking for clarification of the amendment’s intent and the reasoning behind the language, but these have gone unanswered.

Gina Raimondo has always maintained that she is staunchly pro-choice. That she would be behind some of the most audacious anti-choice legislation in decades, and that the language should be inserted into the budget without any public debate or comment may come as a surprise to her supporters.

After receiving the endorsement from the Planned Parenthood Votes! Rhode Island PAC, Raimondo said, ‘The Catholic Church has a clear position and I have a clear position…I am clearly pro-choice.”

But Raimondo’s Budget Article 28, by mandating that every insurer offer multiple plans that do not cover abortion, undermines the accepted medical and legal standard that abortion is a safe and legal procedure. Just as individuals do not get a choice about whether their health insurance covers blood transfusions, erectile dysfunction, or vaccinations, abortion coverage should be treated as an essential health benefit, not an outlier “variation” for which every insurance plan must make an exception.

Tobin hasn’t denied Democratic nominee Gina Raimondo communion, but the Republican bishop did offer a passive rebuke to the Catholic candidate for governor after she won the endorsement of Planned Parenthood. He didn’t mention her by name, but the timing left little doubt.

The very reason Catholics were distrusted in this country in the 1800s and the early 1900s is because Catholics were presumed to be anti-democratic in their allegiance to a foreign king (the Pope) and it was assumed that they would attempt to impose their Catholic values on everyone in the event that they achieved political power. As a result, Catholic politicians invariably hit a ceiling in their careers a few steps before the presidency, unable to convince a majority of Americans nation wide that they could be trusted.

It was John Kennedy who broke this trend, when he gave his famous speech to a meeting of Texas Baptists in which he said that his allegiance was to America, and that the wall of separation between church and state must be high and strong. In bucking the tradition established by JFK, Tobin seeks to take Catholicism back to a time when it was politically irrelevant.

We do not live in a Catholic theocratic state. Most Rhode Islanders, by a factor of 8 to 1, support a woman’s right to make her own decisions regarding her reproductive health care, including abortion. Many religious traditions are not in agreement with the Catholic Church on reproductive rights issues. It would be unconstitutional for government to favor the Catholic heirarchy’s position on this issue, and foolish of us to pay Tobin’s declarations much mind when we can’t be sure if he is expressing himself religiously or politically.