Editorial: Abortion bill makes NC women second-class citizens

“…that any group of men should undertake to settle a scientific fact by majority vote in any assembly is a travesty on the intelligence of our race and we ought not to stand for it.”
— Dr. William Poteat on the occasion of his retirement in 1925 as president of Wake Forest College
The General Assembly Republicans, plastic stethoscopes dangling around their necks, could be the health-care judges for every pregnant woman in North Carolina if they succeed in overturning Governor Roy Cooper’s certain veto. In effect, along with the Dobbs decision by the United States Supreme Court, every woman in this supposedly free state is in thrall to judges and politicians once they become pregnant, making us second-class citizens whether we are 8 or 86. We cannot control our own bodies in the most intimate of decisions.
HOW DARE THEY?
They dare because through the last decade, they have gathered power by wholesale gerrymandering – does anyone believe the almost 50-50 split between Republican and Democrat voters should mean that in 14 U.S. House seats 11 should be constructed to ensure a Republican outcome? Well, that it is the current law in North Carolina since the Republican takeover of the North Carolina Supreme Court.
Does anyone believe the fiction that voter ID really makes elections safer when the current law and state constitutional amendment specifically ban the most common ID black voters use?
North Carolina women are left having to hope that their wanted pregnancies are uneventful. But what about all the pregnancies that are not wanted or encounter difficulties?
Those of us who are older and out of the baby business have to worry about our daughters and granddaughters.
A significant number of first pregnancies result in a miscarriage. Can those women get the medical help they need easily? Not under the bill on Cooper’s desk, where there are unneeded requirements for face-to-face doctor appointments and not just once but twice or thrice. Several doctor visits are required for abortion by legal medication.
One Democrat joked that the Republicans should have included the services of a lawyer for all women because of all the intricate details of this bill.
It basically makes every step of trying to get a needed medical service or abortion a legal nest of wasps.
This 12-week abortion bill is an insult to every woman and a threat to every pregnant woman in North Carolina. Put together in secrecy by a cabal of Republicans, including women, it was rushed through both houses without committee meetings or any real debate.
What is our recourse if the General Assembly succeeds in overriding Cooper’s veto? Only the ballot. Our votes in 2024 could and should throw out Republicans, hopefully by the dozens. We have to have Democratic candidates in every House and Senate district and we have to support them vocally, financially and on Election Day. Meanwhile, pray for every woman who becomes pregnant. And remember that abortion care is health care and health care is based on science. Let’s prove Dr. Poteat right though his focus was on evolution. But, oh, Republicans want to revisit that too.
By Carol W. Pelosi
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