Why Activist Stories Matter and How They Lead to Change: The Reproductive Privacy Act in Rhode Island

“ Roe v. Wade is not going to be overturned. I think that’s a concern that’s not founded in reality,” said Rhode Island House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello in 2018 (Donnis 2022). As much as his words stung activists working to protect the right to abortion, they also signaled that he was out of touch with concerns about access to abortion in the nation as well as the state. National polling generally shows that 7 in 10 people support the right to abortion, and the same was true in Rhode Island (Bender 2018). So how did the smallest, most Catholic state in the United States manage to legislatively protect the right to abortion in 2019 without his support or the support of Rhode Island Senate Leadership?