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Delaware has expanded access to abortion after two pieces of legislation recently became law.

One of the bills signed last month by Gov. John Carney requires Medicaid, private health insurance and state employee insurance plans cover services related to termination of pregnancy. Coverage is capped at $750.

The measure, sponsored by House Majority Leader Melissa Minor-Brown, also bans most insurance plans, including ones covering state workers, from charging copays, applying deductibles or adding cost-sharing requirements for abortion-related services. Religious employers can get exempted from having to offer the coverage.

Speakers at Friday’s press conference celebrating the bills noted that women’s ability to access abortion care depended on the state where they live. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit that advocates for reproductive rights, 13 states have total abortion bans with limited exceptions. Another six states ban the procedure after six or 12 weeks.

Minor-Brown said Delaware’s protections are important because women in other parts of the country are dying. She pointed to reporting by ProPublica about a Georgia mother who died after a hospital delayed care under the state’s abortion ban.

“For years, medical professionals have warned us that access to abortion is literally a matter of life and death. There are states right now that have abortion laws in effect that date back to the 1800s,” she said. “These outdated, dangerous laws were written at a time when women had no voice, no rights and no agency.”

Stacey Haddock Hassel, board chairperson of Planned Parenthood of Delaware, said the bill is a huge step for abortion access because it will help more patients, including those eligible for Medicaid, afford the procedure.

“When we talk about the impact of this legislation, the size, the limit, we don’t know the number of women who would have been able to access abortion care had they been able to use their Medicaid coverage,” she said. “And we don’t know how many women didn’t have the $500 to come to Planned Parenthood and gave up not knowing their options.”

For Planned Parenthood Delaware’s last fiscal year, 24% of its total patient population were Medicaid recipients and 35% had commercial insurance, a news release said. More than 40% of patients used Planned Parenthood’s self-pay system due to being underinsured or uninsured. Of those, half reported incomes below 250% of the Federal Poverty Level — meaning many of them would have likely qualified for Medicaid.

Murray isn’t basing that assessment on polling within Delaware, but rather on anecdotal accounts from candidates and volunteers who are knocking on doors and meeting with voters, including Democrats who might have previously slammed the door on the GOP canvassers.

“People are leaning more toward the center right than they have been historically,” she said. “So yeah, we do have a shot.”

She also noted the strife in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, which Meyer won over Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long, whom the party endorsed, and former state environmental chief Collin O’Mara. The campaign featured political action committee-funded attack ads against Hall-Long because of her yearlong campaign finance scandal, and against Meyer because of two unrelated sexual harassment lawsuits against a county police leader and a tax assessment supervisor since Meyer took office.

“The gubernatorial primary was very, very contentious on the Democrat side,” Murray said. “I don’t think the Bethany Hall-Long voters and the Collin O’Mara voters are automatically going to become Meyer voters.”

Beyond whether Murray’s party has any chance to win a statewide office, the GOP boss echoed Katz in saying “there is dissatisfaction with the one-party rule” in Delaware.

“If you were to ask a [state] representative or a senator, particularly a state senator, the majority is so strong that there’s just not even a conversation or a different point of view,” Murray said.

“That’s a danger. When you’re a republic, you want to have different viewpoints on things, and the one-party rule has taken over so much that it’s difficult to even get the moment at the microphone to say. ‘Hey, can we think about this from a different perspective?’”

On the Democratic side, party executive director Travis Williams seems untroubled by the perception that one-party rule could stifle dissent and ideas.

“We are elected to these positions, right?” Williams said. “It’s not like we’ve taken them. The Delaware voters have elected Delaware Democrats. They’ve chosen to vote for us and they haven’t chosen to vote for Republicans. So I think we’d be a little more worried about losing those seats if Republicans put forth some actual policies that people agree with.”

Williams also said that despite the party’s unsuccessful endorsement of Hall-Long, leaders have pivoted to supporting Meyer as well as the rest of the Democratic ticket. Outgoing Democratic Gov. John Carney also backed the lieutenant governor, recording an advertisement for her candidacy. While Hall-Long’s political career appears over, Carney will remain a prominent player in Delaware politics as mayor of Wilmington after winning the Democratic primary for that seat, with no GOP foe.

“We don’t have a lot of time to get stuck on what happened in the primary,” Williams said. “We’ve got to come together and work to elect Democrats in the general election. We’ve met and are continuing to work with all of the nominees. And now that we have them and things are going well, we’re united and working together.”

He’s also guardedly optimistic that once the results are in, Democrats will retain all nine statewide seats, and perhaps even have that House supermajority.

“We are confident in the conversations that we’ve been having with voters,” Williams said. “We’ve been getting good responses from folks as we’ve been out and talking to people about the issues. So that bodes well for us.”

“But there’s still a lot of work that has to get done right? It’s a constant conversation. There’s work that we’ve got to do so while it does look good, we’ve still got to get over the finish line.”

DELAWARE – Delaware’s lone House Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester is unveiling a new plan to support agriculture across the First State. Rep. Blunt Rochester tells WMDT that the ideas for the plan came from Delawareans. She heard from them as she traveled on her Delivering For Delaware tour.

Farmers Facing Pressure

The Congresswoman says farmers face many pressures. They include supply chain challenges and the threat of diseases like highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). Those in the agriculture industry also deal with a changing climate and razor-thin margins in a tight economy.

One in four Delawareans live in rural areas. Rep. Blunt Rochester says coming up with creative solutions to tackle the challenges that many of them face is crucial.

“We’ve seen a decline in our family farms. In Delaware, I think it’s about 90% of our farms are family farms. We want to continue supporting them,” Rep. Blunt Rochester said. “It’s farming, but it’s also biotech; it’s also finding new cures for things. That’s all part of agriculture.”

Protecting Producers

Delaware Secretary of Agriculture Michael Scuse agrees that those challenges are mounting, especially involving the supply chain.

“We really need to make sure that we are able to get adequate products and supplies from foreign countries where we’re importing nitrogen, potash, and other things for our producers,” Secretary Scuse said. “Better managing our supply chain to help ensure that we don’t have those disruptions is extremely important to everyone, not just producers.”

Sometimes farmers are faced with even tougher challenges, like losses of animals from diseases such as HPAI. Secretary Scuse says protecting producers is vital.

“When contract growers get hit with [HPAI], they’re not the ones that receive the compensation. Yes, they’ll be compensated for cleaning up their facilities, but it’s lost revenue for those producers,” Secretary Scuse said.

Community Care Means Farmers’ Success

However, Rep. Blunt Rochester says supporting farmers off of the fields is equally as important.

The Congresswoman’s agriculture plan urges more resources for housing, health care, lower utility costs, increasing education, and delivering the latest in technology to rural communities.

“Making sure that we’re paying attention to what we’ve done but also what we can do, that’s what this plan is all about,” Rep. Blunt Rochester said. “As we look towards the future, and look towards the present, we’ve got to make sure that we’re using all of the tools at our disposal.”

The need to increase access to technology is growing just as fast as the innovation itself is progressing, says Secretary Scuse.

“Today’s agriculture world is high-tech. We are very reliant now on high-speed internet at all of our farms,” Secretary Scuse said. “We have planters now that are relying on GPS to go straight across the field to change plant populations, to change nutrient loads on different areas of the field as needed.”

Inspiring the Next Generation

All of these efforts, Rep. Blunt Rochester says, inform the way that Delaware will support its next generation of farmers. And extending that attention to the younger generations is key in that work, she says.

The Congresswoman points to farm-to-table programs, and innovative projects like vertical farming in First State schools, primary to higher education. Rep. Blunt Rochester is also touting her success in securing Congressional community project funding to bring the Delaware State Fair’s 4H and Future Farmers of America facility up to speed.

And, the Food Bank of Delaware’s work in growing fresh produce and serving it to the hungry is another creative solution, says the Congresswoman. Other important efforts, she says, include inspiring and enabling urban communities to connect agriculture.

“Our goal is to encourage [young people], to inform them, and to educate them about what the possibilities are, and really to make it fun and cool,” Rep. Blunt Rochester said. “We tried to look at the whole continuum, from little kids all the way up to our current farmers, to make sure that they have the resources they need, as well.”

Secretary Scuse says it will be extremely important to continue inspiring the younger generations. Part of that is helping them to see that farming isn’t just about sowing seeds and tending livestock. Agriculture is also dependent on non-production jobs, from biotechnology to aeronautics.

“You could run the whole list and there’s probably an area in agriculture that fits in,” Secretary Scuse said. “We need our brightest and best minds to continue in these areas that are actually going to help production agriculture.”

Collaborating on Capitol Hill

Looking ahead, Rep. Blunt Rochester says collaborating with other lawmakers on Capitol Hill is going to be vital to pushing these efforts forward. The Congresswoman is the first person from the state of Delaware to serve on the House Agriculture Committee in 120 years.

And, Rep. Blunt Rochester says she’s seen first-hand how agriculture touches so many lives. The Congresswoman recounts an incident in line at the grocery store in which she noticed a father with three children replacing a bag of grapes that rang up at $9.

“It shook me to my core, and it made me realize that I can do something,” Rep. Blunt Rochester said. “Every single one of us is impacted by agriculture in this country and in this state, and [it relates to] the focus on keeping the costs of goods down so people can afford them.”

To download and read Rep. Blunt Rochester’s agriculture plan, click here.