Connecticut State Representative Treneé McGee (D-West Haven) was one of 14 State House Democrats – among them 10 people of color, including McGee – who voted against a bill that would expand abortion rights further in Connecticut.
A report at CT Insider featured McGee’s “voice of dissent” last week as she rose to speak against the bill, recalling numerous conversations she has had with black girls over the years about abortion.
“They were taught about abortion as a birth control method,” the Democrat said. “They were taught that at any point in time, when they were 13 or 12 or 15, they could go to a Planned Parenthood and receive an abortion without their parents knowing.”
McGee added:
I want to speak to the history of this industry and why I think it’s destructive to my community. Black women make up 14% of child-bearing populations yet obtained 36.2% of all reported abortions. Black women have the highest abortion ratio in the country – 474 abortions per 1,000 live births.
“I knew that it had a very strong chance of passing but I wanted to give a different perspective on this topic, which affects our communities differently,” McGee, 27, told CT Insider Wednesday about HB 5414, which ultimately passed in the State House, 87-60.
She added more expanded abortion rights are “definitely not a priority in the black community.”
McGee, who has been vocal about her pro-life sviews, won a special election in December. She said members of the black and Puerto Rican Caucus, many who also opposed the abortion expansion bill, urged her to speak up last week.
“There are many Democrats who I believe have felt shut out of the party because of their beliefs on abortion,” she said.
Family Institute of Connecticut (FIC) highlighted McGee’s statement in a tweet Tuesday.
Rep. Trenee McGee on the editorial page of the Rep-Am today.
Please help us stop pro-abortion bill HB 5414 from becoming law: https://t.co/bhSXxOHZ4C pic.twitter.com/Q5h9d8jjsL
— Family Institute CT (@FICAction) April 26, 2022
The national pro-life Susan B. Anthony List praised McGee for speaking up against many in her party in Connecticut and most national Democrats.
National Dems present their pro-abortion extremism as the default.
But that's simply not true.
CT State Rep. Treneé McGee, a pro-life Democrat, spoke out against a pro-abortion bill & was joined by 13 Dems, 10 of them members of the Black & Puerto Rican Caucus, in opposing it. pic.twitter.com/YrW9VSfp4t
— SBA Pro-Life America (@sbaprolife) April 21, 2022
FICs Peter Wolfgang observed seven State House Republicans voted in favor of the abortion expansion bill, notably Deputy Republican Leader Laura Devlin (R-Fairfield), who is GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski’s choice for lieutenant governor.
On her Twitter account, Devlin states she is running for lieutenant governor “to change the status quo.”
Her vote for the abortion expansion bill, however, drew this comment from one Twitter user self-identified as a “delegate,” who recommends Devlin “drop out now”:
As a delegate I am wondering how Bob can stand by YOU, one of the seven Republicans to vote for the radical abortion expansion bill yesterday HB-5414. Mark this day on the calendar that Republicans lost the 2022 election if you do not drop out now.
— Calamity Jenn (@CalamityJenn1) April 21, 2022
“What are pro-life voters to make of the fact that 14 House Democrats are more conservative on abortion than the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor?” asked Wolfgang, adding:
In his own comments on the bill, Gov. Lamont expressed more fear of a social conservative PAC than he did of his opponents. Lamont seems to understand the potential of social conservativism to swing an election. Do the Republicans? We know at least the Republicans who voted against HB 5414 do. Many of them spoke eloquently against the bill.
Flanked by Planned Parenthood officials and other abortion advocates, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) last week vowed to sign into law the bill that he said will keep the termination of pregnancies going in the state regardless of whether Roe v. Wade is reversed in the anticipated decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Connecticut, however, is already one of the few states that has codified the provisions of Roe v. Wade in state law, a fact that led critics of the bill to question how or why it was designed.
“We hear a lot about access to abortion and providing a safer way to getting an abortion, but I don’t have the confidence that this legislation accomplishes that goal,” said State House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, (R-North Branford).
Wolfgang noted HB 5414, in its original form, would have allowed Connecticut to serve as a “sanctuary state” for abortionists fleeing other states in which ending the life of unborn babies might be considered a crime.
“But prior to the bill being called in the House yesterday, HB 5414 was amended so that it only protects an abortionist from Texas if the abortion occurred in Connecticut,” Wolfgang wrote. “This amendment essentially moots the whole law.”
The Family Institute of Connecticut leader explained left-wing, anti-family activists in the state continue to “pass laws against phantom menaces that do not actually exist.”
“The motivation of these Potemkin Village laws appears to be to gin up grassroots energy on the Left prior to elections,” he surmised. “But the laws do not actually accomplish anything. It’s a strange fraud that Connecticut’s liberal groups perpetrate on their own members to maintain power.”
Connecticut held its first-ever March for Life on March 23, with several thousand residents gathered outside the state Capitol building in Hartford for a rally and peaceful demonstration that celebrated life from the moment of conception to natural death.
Christina Bennett, another prominent black pro-life leader from Connecticut, told the crowds during the rally her mother changed course when pregnant with her after a janitor urged her to reconsider her decision to have an abortion.
“The place that could have been my graveyard is now my battleground,” Bennett said of Hartford.
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Susan Berry, PhD, is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Treneé McGee” by Connecticut House Democrats. Background Photo “Connecticut Capitol” by Ragesoss. CC BY-SA 1.0.
