Around New England
Pro-Lifers Protest Pro-Abortion Candidate for Governor in Keene
July 18, 2018
Pro-life protesters confronted Steve Marchand, a Democratic candidate for governor of New Hampshire, over his call for a state statute guaranteeing legal abortion and for using state Medicaid funds to pay for abortions for poor women.
Marchand, a former mayor of Portsmouth, came to Keene in the southwestern corner of the state for a campaign event Tuesday.
Anti-abortion protesters made up about half of the dozen or so people who came out to hear Marchand speak, according to the Keene Sentinel.
All three major-party candidates for governor in New Hampshire — Chris Sununu, the Republican incumbent, and Democratic challengers Marchand and former state senator Molly Kelly — support legal abortion. But Marchand’s position is the most explicit, and he is trying to use it as a wedge against Kelly.
“I think he has taken the most extreme position on this. He’s losing this race. This is an attention-grabber,” protest organizer Jerry Sickels of Keene told the Keene Sentinel.
Unlike in Massachusetts, in New Hampshire Medicaid funds can only be used to pay for an abortion in the cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is endangered.
The Keene Sentinel reported that when one anti-abortion protester compared abortion to slavery, “Someone in the crowd called that assertion racist …”
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