Josh Rogers

It's been a busy week at the statehouse, with high profile votes on issues ranging from redistricting and abortion, to medical marijuana, gambling and school building aid.

NHPR's Josh Rogers has been following the action. He recaps the latest with All Things Considered host Brady Carlson.

The NH house has voted to require women to wait 24 hours before getting an abortion. 

The so-called women’s right to know bill had to be pared back to win final house passage. Penalties for doctors were stripped, as was the  requirements that abortion providers give women seeking an abortion specific information about abortion risks, including a contested claim linking aborts to breast cancer.  According to the final amendments lead author Republican Tammy Simmons of Manchester, limiting the proposal to a simple 24 waiting period is a common sense compromise.

No bill authorizing slot machines or casinos has ever passed the N.H. house, but this plan, which would use the revenue -- projected at 290 million dollars -- to lower business taxes, is seen as having a shot. House ways and means chairman Steve Stepanek (r-Amherst) says N.H. must act.

“The game plan has changed because Massachusetts has expanded gambling passed. And Maine is pushing their expanded gambling. We have got to respond.”

The 211-116 margin was a victory for gay rights advocates. It was also a shock to social conservatives, who thought a 3 to 1 GOP majority combined with a party platform that defines marriage as a between a man and women, would secure the bill’s passage. 

Deep into a debate that lasted 2 hours and included 10 separate votes, Kingston Republican David Welch stated what by then was plain: gay marriage is topic that divides House Republicans.

 A member of the New Hampshire House's criminal justice committee dropped a pistol on the floor of the legislative office building at a hearing on a controversial bill dealing with abortion.

Kyle Tasker, a Northwood Republican, dropped the loaded gun, one of two .45 caliber pistols he wears in shoulder holsters, as he took his seat in a crowded hearing room.

“I just gave blood and I might not have latched it quite properly. All I could think of was, it was bound to happen one of these days, I come here too often for that not to have happened.”

About two-dozen members of the pro-gay marriage group Standing Up For New Hampshire Families held a news conference to urged the defeat of the bill slated for a vote in the House Wednesday. State Rep. Mike Ball, chairman of the Manchester Republican Committee, compared the repeal effort to a segregation law, and added he can’t back his party platform’s opposition to gay marriage.

"The Republican platform is wrong on that issue. That’s the bottom line. Much as I’d like to say we are a hundred percent right, on this one we are not right. This is a civil liberties issue."  

 The New Hampshire House has moved to decriminalize a person’s first two possessions of less than a half ounce of marijuana. 

It passed by a single vote.

 “162 members having voted in the affirmative, 161 in the negative. The chair declines to vote."

 Republican Speaker Bill O'Brien decision to not vote against the bill sends it to the senate, where its prospects are unclear.

 The New Hampshire House voted to allow any employer with a religious objection to deny workers insurance coverage for contraceptives.

Adding an exemption to New Hampshire’s 12-year-old law requiring contraceptives be covered in all drug plans has become a priority for House Speaker William O'Brien. And his leadership team pushed the bill through over strong objection from Democrats and a gallery full of protesters.

House Speaker William O'Brien's bill to allow any employer with a religious objection to exclude contraception coverage from employee health plans draws fire from Democrats and leaves GOP Gubernatorial hopefuls leery.

Democrats’ problems with this bill are by far the more pronounced. Gubernatorial hopeful Jackie Cilley, for instance, has urged supporters to “take to the streets” over the issue. Fellow candidate Maggie Hassan, meanwhile, took to the statehouse for a morning press conference.

President Obama will travel to Nashua Thursday to talk about the economy. It will be his first trip to the state since November, when he visited Manchester Central high school to promote extending the payroll tax cut as part of a jobs bill.

The trip come a week after Vice President Joe Biden stumped for the President’s reelection at the New Hampshire Institute for Art. Biden was on a three-state jaunt raising money for Democrats.

The resolution asks the federal government to undo a rule requiring insurance companies to provide contraceptives to employees of religious organizations.

House republican leaders say religious liberty is in jeopardy under the federal rule, even though it no longer requires religious organizations to directly pay for contraceptives. House Speaker William O’Brien says the 227-to-121 vote sends the message that either way, the requirement’s intent is simply wrong.

The New Hampshire House will likely vote next week to ask the federal government to rescind a rule forcing insurers to provide contraceptives to employees of religious organizations. House Speaker William O'Brien says he'll also work to undo a similar state law. 

O’Brien told the house state and federal relations committee it's unconstitutional for governments, federal or state, to tell insurers to offer contraception to workers at religious organizations.

Top house and senate republicans are at odds over constitutional amendments designed to keep government small. 

The state senate's proposed constitutional change would require a 60 percent vote by lawmakers to increase state spending beyond the rate of inflation. As passed by the house, the proposal would have required that same super-majority to borrow money or raise taxes.

According to Senate President Peter Bragdon the senate version amounts to common sense -- low taxes, he says, result from low spending.

The New Hampshire Senate has approved a constitutional amendment to give the state more leeway in how it distributes school aid. 

The amendment would make it easier for lawmakers to target money to poorer communities but not explicitly undue the Claremont rulings that require the state to fund an adequate education for every child. After the vote Governor Lynch described the proposal as “a significant milestone.”