Update: Decision Desk HQ projected late Tuesday that Republican Kelly Ayotte will beat Democrat Joyce Craig in the only competitive governor’s race in the country this year.

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Abortion is legal in New Hampshire with few restrictions but that hasn’t stopped the issue of reproductive rights from figuring prominently in the most competitive gubernatorial contest in the country this year.

The race pits Democrat Joyce Craig, the former mayor of Manchester — the state’s largest city — against Republican Kelly Ayotte, a former one-term U.S. senator and state attorney general.

They are vying for an open seat created by current Republican Gov. Chris Sununu’s decision to not run for a fifth two-year term. As the only governor’s race rated a true toss-up enters its final stretch, polls show the two women separated by as little as a point or two. One issue with the potential to determine the outcome? Abortion.

“It’s a top-tier issue,” said Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire, along with the economy, taxes, crime and immigration. “The only question in my mind is how big.”

Abortion is legal in New Hampshire up to 24 weeks after the last menstrual period, right around the time of fetal viability, and after that in cases where the pregnant parent’s life is at risk or there has been a fatal fetal diagnosis. But New Hampshire is also the only state in New England where abortion is not explicitly protected by law — and the only state in the region where Medicaid does not cover abortion. 

Abortion rights advocates, along with Democrats in the statehouse and candidates like Craig, believe this makes the right to get an abortion precarious in a state where, among other things, Republicans in the GOP-controlled statehouse earlier this year introduced, but did not pass, a 15-day abortion ban that experts told The 19th at the time was “basically a ban at fertilization.”

In Craig’s first campaign advertisement, the mother of three talked about an ultrasound appointment that showed her fetus did not have a heartbeat, saying: “I miscarried and I was able to end my pregnancy without interference. I’m running for governor because these decisions belong to women, not politicians.” She then discussed her support for Planned Parenthood while Manchester’s mayor and contrasted her record with that of Ayotte, saying the former senator spent her career “attacking reproductive rights.”

When she was running for the Senate, Ayotte called for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. Once serving in the upper chamber, she supported legislation to implement a national 20-week abortion ban with exceptions for rape and incest, or to save the life of the pregnant parent — though just a handful of weeks shorter than New Hampshire’s cutoff, many severe fetal abnormalities incompatible with life are diagnosed between 18 and 22 weeks. She also supported a failed Republican amendment to a highway bill that would have dramatically expanded exceptions to the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act, and co-sponsored stand-alone legislation that would have done the same. She supports withholding government funds from Planned Parenthood. 

But running for office in 2024 is different than in 2010, during Ayotte’s first Senate bid, or even during her second, in 2016, which she lost to Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan, a former governor. Now, the Supreme Court has overturned Roe in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, returning the issue to the states. It may be tricky for Ayotte to completely separate herself from the ruling.

Ayotte shepherded one of the three Donald Trump-nominated conservative justices involved in the decision, Neil Gorsuch, during his confirmation process. Ayotte endorsed Trump during his 2016 campaign, then withdrew her support after an Access Hollywood tape surfaced in which Trump bragged about groping women, then endorsed him again this year as he competes against Vice President Kamala Harris, who is expected to win New Hampshire.

Republicans in competitive races, from Trump down to statehouse candidates, are scrambling to assure voters that they won’t restrict access to abortion, contraception and other types of reproductive health care in the wake of the Dobbs decision, which many of them called for and in some cases hailed but was deeply unpopular with the American people. 

“This is a state that is a pro-choice state,” said Scala. “The overturn of Roe did spark a considerable backlash against Republicans and it really wrong-footed Republicans back in 2022 and I think Craig and the Democrats are hoping that Ayotte has been equally unconvincing this time around and that there are a lot of voters out there who want to punish Republicans for the overturn of Roe.”

Ayotte said during a debate hosted this week by New Hampshire Public Radio and PBS that she believes “our current law really is the consensus of people in New Hampshire.” 

“I would not allow anything more restrictive in our state, and that’s really important, I’ve said that from Day One, the minute I got in a Republican primary, I said that law is what I support and I would veto any further restrictions,” Ayotte said.

She did not answer a question from a debate moderator about whether she would sign or veto legislation to eliminate criminal or civil penalties for health care providers related to abortion after 24 weeks, except to say that if “there were any issues with respect to doctors, I would address it.”

In ads, Ayotte has said she would not hesitate to veto legislation that would curtail abortion rights and accused Democrats of “politicizing abortion to win votes.” She penned an op-ed stating her support for in vitro fertilization (IVF) to lay out her case, writing that she was “disappointed” a New Hampshire newspaper published an “in-depth article about IVF … without giving me the chance to respond.”

Then, last week, Ayotte released an ad in which she described her own experience finding out three months into a pregnancy that her fetus did not have a heartbeat. “I know what it feels like to have your dream shattered,” Ayotte said, pivoting to say she would never deny access to IVF. She did not explain how her miscarriage experience related to IVF, whether she has used IVF to conceive or whether her miscarriage required the type of medical intervention that is imperiled by some strict abortion bans.

The 19th reached out to Ayotte’s campaign and an external spokesperson, John Corbett of Jamestown Associates, a dozen times to ask follow-up questions about the IVF advertisement; details about what Ayotte would do as governor related to reproductive health care in addition to what she would not do, such as sign or veto an abortion shield law, or legislative protections for abortion; and whether she had campaign events open to news media during a recent trip The 19th made to New Hampshire. They did not respond.

It remains clear that abortion will continue to remain an issue in the race during its closing days.

At a recent roundtable on reproductive health care that Craig hosted with doctors, a nurse and patients, along with U.S. Sens. Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, state Sen. Rebecca Perkins-Kwoka and state Rep. Jen Mandelbaum, the health care providers told the Democratic lawmakers that their patients are worried enough about the future of their reproductive rights in New Hampshire that they are opting for long-term contraception like IUDs instead of shorter-term birth control pills or barrier methods and in some cases even pursuing sterilization. Shaheen noted that when she was governor, the New Hampshire legislature repealed a strict abortion ban still on the books from the 1800s in a bipartisan effort.

Craig told The 19th after the roundtable that if elected governor she would “not just sit back and wait for bills to come to my desk, but work with the legislature to put forward bills so that they can be signed.”

“And one of those things is working to codify access to abortion,” Craig said. 

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