Gayle Goldin, former Rhode Island state senator; Democrat from Providence
An abortion-supporting Rhode Island state senator has resigned to take a job in the Biden administration.
Gayle Goldin, a Democrat, represented the east side of Providence until she resigned during the morning of Tuesday, August 17, effective immediately.
Her new job is senior advisor in the U.S. Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau, which was established in 1920 (when Woodrow Wilson was president) to promote policies designed to help working women.
As a state senator, Goldin was the sponsor of a bill that provides temporary caregiver insurance payments to those out of work to care for a newborn child, a recently adopted child, or a sick relative, according to The Providence Journal, which reported her resignation Tuesday morning.
While serving as a state senator, Goldin also worked as a campaign advisor for a group called Family Values @ Work (for the past five and half years, according to her LinkedIn page), “Working to win family and medical leave insurance for all.”
Her LinkedIn page also lists “expansion of child care assistance, the tipped minimum wage, EITC, voter protections, maternal mortality reviews, LGBTQ rights” and “historic protections for reproductive rights” as among her achievements as a state senator. (“EITC” stands for the Earned Income Tax Credit program, which provides welfare payments to poor households with children.)
“While we may be effective fighters in our policy ideas, confronting everyday sexism is exhausting,” Goldin wrote.
In 2020, she announced she was considering running for a leadership post in the state Senate, according to The Providence Journal. She didn’t. She also considered running for Rhode Island Secretary of State.
Goldin was a sponsor of Rhode Senate Bill 267, filed in February 2021, which seeks to provide state funding for abortions for poor women – or what the bill refers to as “pregnant people.” The bill would also repeal a current ban on funding of abortions through the state employees’ health insurance plans.
Goldin was also a sponsor of Rhode Island Senate Bill 775, a bill filed in April 2021 seeking to legalize assisted suicide – or what the bill refers to as “medical aid in dying.”
Neither bill has come to the floor for a vote.
In 2018, Goldin was the primary sponsor of Rhode Island Senate Bill 2163 (titled “The Reproductive Health Care Act”), an all-nine-months abortion bill that sought to remove all restrictions on abortions before what the bill called “fetal viability” and all restrictions on “an individual person from terminating that individual’s pregnancy after fetal viability when necessary to preserve the health or life of that individual.”
Goldin’s original abortion bill died in committee in May 2019. Instead, in June 2019, then-governor Gina Raimondo, a Democrat who is now U.S. secretary of commerce under President Joe Biden, signed a bill into law that recognizes a right to abortion in Rhode Island even if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.
One candidate for Goldin’s now-former state Senate seat has already announced her campaign, according to The Providence Journal: Hilary Levey Friedman, who resigned Tuesday as president of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Organization for Women.
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Gayle Goldin, former Rhode Island state senator; Democrat from Providence 
