Senate Democrats Use Obscure Rule To Save Abortion Bill For Another Vote

Rhode Island Senate Democrats used an obscure legislative rule Tuesday to stop the chamber’s top two Republicans from defeating a bill meant to ensure abortion rights in the state, and to instead transfer it to a different committee, Health and Human Services, that has more abortion rights supporters, for a vote on Thursday.

Senate Minority Leader Dennis Algiere of Westerly and Minority Whip Elaine Morgan of Hopkinton are not standing members of the Judiciary Committee. They were ready to use their ex officio capacity to vote on a revised abortion bill released this week, changing the expected outcome from a five-to-four approval to a six-to-five rejection.

“That is something that is not normal and the usual course for votes,” Judiciary Chairwoman Erin Lynch Prata (D-Warwick) said, referring to the ex officio appearance of Algiere and Morgan.

Lynch Prata continued: “I think that it does a disservice to this committee and to the members of this committee and to the people who sat here for 12 hours and listened to testimony, who have received all of the written testimony and have absorbed that, who have discussed with one another where we can go with this bill, to come in in an attempt to then change that vote after changes to the bill had been made to satisfy the standing committee.”

Read more: https://thepublicsradio.org/article/senate-democrats-use-obscure-rule-to-save-abortion-bill-for-another-vote