Protesters Rally Outside Council Meeting [VIDEO]

About 40 protesters stood outside the Concord City Council chambers for about an hour on July 25, holding signs, chanting, and cheering, attempting to put pressure on Executive Councilor Dan St. Hilaire.

The protesters are still smarting over a June Executive Council decision to not award a multi-million dollar contract to the organization to provide birth control and other services for women of limited means in the Granite State. One of the Councilors voting against the contract was St. Hilaire, a Republican, who is also an at-large city councilor in Concord. St. Hilaire has said he voted against the contract because Planned Parenthood performed abortions and it was against the law for taxpayers to fund abortions directly or indirectly.

Jennifer Frizzell, a senior policy advisor for the group, said the protesters were attempting to raise awareness about the women who were not getting access to reproductive services due to St. Hilaire’s “no” vote.

“The effect of that contract rejection has been devastating to women and families who rely on Planned Parenthood services across New Hampshire,” she said.

St. Hilaire, Frizzell said, cast the deciding vote and singled-out Planned Parenthood for defunding. She said since the rejection, the organization has had to perform “triage … our first priority has been taking care of clinical patient issues,” although she noted that a lot of support has come out of the woodwork since the vote.

“It runs the gamut from being concerned to being outraged,” she said, “and so we have tried to create some organized way of showing those feelings and direct some advocacy to Councilor St. Hilaire.”

Frizzell said she was surprised by the votes since funding in the past was a procedural decision based on winning a request for proposals. She said before the vote, she reached out to St. Hilaire and the other councilors, providing information about the services the organization provided to women in need. Frizzell said for 40 years, the organization had received this contract. Organizers “beat back” three attempts in the House to keep Planned Parenthood from bidding for open contracts, she said.

“We have not historically had to lobby our Executive Council once we are the duly recognized, qualified winner of an RFP process, to deliver women’s services,” she said. “It’s certainly unanticipated and quite unorthodox that the Executive Council would advance a matter that the Legislature has rejected with a single vote without giving us the chance to have any due process.”

Frizzell and others have said that hundreds of women have not been able to access services since the rejection of the contract.

Inside the council chamber, where the chanting and cheers were quite audible, St. Hilaire refused comment.

“No comment,” he said, repeatedly.