On Wednesday, October 6th, House Speaker Sherman Packard ordered Ken Weyler, the chairman of the House Finance Committee, to resign from his position for sharing a document containing COVID-19 conspiracy theories. Packard made it clear that, if Weyler did not resign, he would be removed, citing his “deep concerns of the content in [Weyler’s] emails.”
Meanwhile, two Republican members of the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee—Chairman Ned Gordon and Rep. Joe Alexander—have moved to gut New Hampshire’s only protections for unborn children and replace them with nothing. This comes despite the fact that the NHGOP platform states that “life is sacred from conception to natural death.” Yet so far, there has been no reaction from House Republican leadership.
Cornerstone has long taken the position that, to achieve real victories, pro-lifers must reach compromises with moderate Republicans. We are not in the habit of demanding that Republican representatives be removed from committees.
But Gordon and Alexander’s actions are extreme, outrageous, and beyond the pale. For leadership to remain silent and allow them to continue sitting as members of the House Judiciary Committee would be a betrayal of the voters who chose a Republican majority to lead this state.
If Gordon and Alexander succeed in their efforts, New Hampshire will have a law which superficially claims to ban abortion at 6 months, but which will nonetheless effectively allow abortion providers to kill unborn children at any time.
This would be even worse than having no law on abortion at all. At least before the Fetal Life Protection Act was signed into law, Republican politicians could not disguise the fact that New Hampshire allowed abortion up to birth. A gutted, unenforceable law will serve only one purpose: to help GOP politicians deceive pro-life voters into supporting them.
Cornerstone is, and will remain, willing to make compromises to achieve substantive victories. But we have no interest in helping politicians deceive our supporters to win votes.
If supporters of New Hampshire’s pro-life movement do not put their foot down now, we will have sacrificed precious children and failed each other. Republican leadership must decide whether the NHGOP platform contains even a modicum of truth on the issue of life—or whether they will allow a Republican-led committee to facilitate the deaths of children in the last three months of pregnancy.
Contact Speaker Packard and contact Majority Leader Osborne, and call on them to remove Chairman Gordon and Rep. Alexander from the House Judiciary Committee.
To learn more about the Fetal Life Protection Act, see our FAQ or the infographic below.
