Colin Van Ostern served as Executive Councilor for District 2 from 2012-2016 and lives in Concord.

Here’s a resolution for 2024: let’s make this year the year that New Hampshire trusts all our citizens to make their own healthcare decisions, both in practice and at the ballot box.

On Thursday, Jan. 4, the NH Senate Judiciary Committee holds the very first public hearing of 2024 on asking New Hampshire voters to decide on a proposed amendment to the NH state constitution to guarantee the fundamental right to safe, legal, and accessible abortion in our state.

An amendment is critical, and the need is immediate. Unless legislators are afraid to let voters have their say, the question of amending our constitution will be put to all New Hampshire voters on the ballot this fall in the 2024 election.

We need a constitutional amendment because the erosion in reproductive rights in recent years is alarming.

Just over a decade ago, I was elected to the first of two terms on New Hampshire’s Executive Council, representing Concord and 48 other towns and cities across the state, in my early 30s. It had never occurred to me to run until June 2011 when the Council voted 3-2 to successfully shut off funding for birth control, cancer screenings, and annual exams at our state’s Planned Parenthood health centers.

I was outraged, and I did what so many New Hampshire citizens have done before when their elected representatives screw up: I ran for office. We won, and we got funding restored. After the next election, it was shut off again — and we ramped up the pressure again, and restored funding once again. But it was an ominous sign.

We cannot let basic health care be treated like a political ping pong ball at the whim of politicians. And let’s be clear: access to safe, legal abortion with the support of medical professionals is a fundamental human right and a critical element of basic health care. That’s why we need a constitutional amendment in New Hampshire today.

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Never again can we let politicians play dumb, or claim we should “leave it up to the states.” In 2016 when I ran for governor against Chris Sununu, he campaigned as a “pro-choice” candidate and flipped in support of Planned Parenthood funding a few months before the election, which he won narrowly. Then in office, he signed an abortion ban into law, complete with civil and criminal penalties for doctors, and went on to brag about being “the first governor in 40 years to sign an abortion ban.”

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Governor Sununu has failed to take any action to protect reproductive freedom in New Hampshire. In the absence of leadership on this issue, House and Senate Democratic leaders have stepped up and introduced a comprehensive package of legislation this year to protect reproductive freedom. Four of those Senate bills will be heard on Jan. 4, including a constitutional amendment.

We all know the national realities these decisions are happening under: a right-wing Supreme Court that struck down nearly fifty years of precedent when they ended Roe vs Wade; extreme politicians in various states threatening to jail women and doctors who seek to terminate pregnancies even when carrying lethal fetal diagnosis, or who have suffered rape and incest. Every month is a new assault on our rights — new proposed abortion bans at 15 weeks, or 6 weeks, or 15 days. Restrictions on telemedicine. Attacks against birth control and contraception itself.

The headlines are horrifying, but this fight isn’t about extreme examples. It’s about the fact that every one of us controls our own body, not the government. And today, there are no state or federal laws that actually protect abortion rights in New Hampshire. We need both.

My step-mom served as the executive director of a Planned Parenthood health center for thirty years in the state of Kentucky. Her generation remembers the time before Roe, and sadly, our generation is having to learn it today in painful detail.

But there is hope. Even in dark red states like Kentucky and Ohio, voters in 2023 took the issue into their own hands and voted resoundingly to support abortion rights. Here in deep purple, and overwhelmingly pro-choice New Hampshire, shouldn’t we do the same in 2024?