Blumenthal Drawing Support From Female Voters In Bid For Second Term

Decades spent courting female voters in Connecticut are paying off handsomely for U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal as he launches his campaign for a second term.

Of the many issues that engage the state's senior Democratic senator — consumer protection, gun control, defense spending that brings home billions of dollars — few yield the tangible results that come with his support for issues important to women in predominantly Democratic Connecticut.

Blumenthal says his support for protecting access to abortion, for example, is a human right not limited to women because the issue of privacy is at stake. But he wins unstinting praise from abortion rights groups while drawing strong denunciations from abortion foes, with one calling him a nightmare to her cause.

"Women's health care and reproductive rights are an integral part of the fabric of my career, long before I became a U.S. senator," he said in an interview Thursday.

Read more: http://www.courant.com/politics/hc-blumenthal-women-20160711-story.html