Last night, May 16, both bodies of the NC General Assembly voted to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto. Most of SB20 will become the law on July 1.
“…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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November 1, 2024
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9 Responses
thank you Carol for an intelligent editorial that wasn’t full of hysterical rhetoric, medical decisions for others should not be decided by a bunch of old white guys who get carried away with their self importance. I am sure you will receive reams of vile responses, sadly we are not able to discuss critical issues with hateful
speech.
The glee democrats get out of killing babies is inhuman.
I get it – you want to be free to murder innocent babies in the womb, while justifying it as “women’s healthcare” which is patently absurd. It is a good thing for those babies that Gov. Cooper’s veto was overridden, but I know you cannot see it that way, because you are blind to the truth.
More Democrats in the NC legislature? Sure, I mean, when you consider how much better they have made things at the Federal level….
I had a miscarriage at 12 weeks and was bleeding out. How dare you accuse me of trying to kill my baby. I am forever devastated by this.
No women wants to go through this. You need to talk to people/women who could have died.
Suz,
I am truly sorry about your miscarriage. I know several women who have suffered the same awful loss, and I saw how devastating it was for them. I was not accusing you of killing your unborn child.
But you appear not to have actually read SB 20, because there are provisions in the bill which allow for non-elective abortions.
Article 1I of GS Chapter 90
“Defines abortion to mean a surgical abortion or a medical abortion, which are both defined to mean the intentional termination of a known pregnancy WITH AN INTENTION OTHR THAN to (1) increase the probability of a live birth; (2) preserve the life or health of the child; (3) remove a dead, unborn child who died as a result of natural causes in utero, accidental trauma, or a criminal assault that causes the premature termination of the pregnancy; or (4) remove an ectopic pregnancy….’
GS 90-21.81B: “…describing four instances of a lawful miscarriage or abortion; when a qualified physician determines there exists A MEDICAL EMERGENCY… after the 12th week and through the 20th week of a woman’s pregnancy, when the procedure is performed by a qualified physician in a suitable facility pursuant to the requirements of GS 90-21.82A when the woman’s pregnancy is A RESULT OF RAPE OR INCEST;”
SB 20 rightfully makes it illegal for women to use abortion as birth control – according to statistics by Pew Research, in 2019, 93% of abortions occurred before 13 weeks gestation – and it also ends the barbaric practice of killing a newborn child after it has been born.
Bob, you have NO idea what women go through, the thousands of things that can go wrong during pregnancy, the toll it can take on a woman’s physical and mental health. Carol is right- once we are pregnant, republicans see our worth as second to a fetus.
Katy,
No, Carol is wrong.
This shouldn’t be a political issue… it’s clear that Republicans are as guilty of polarizing abortion as are Democrats. No doubt there are some men who are clueless, but as far as your statement that I have “no idea what women go through,” my wife would strongly disagree after bearing 3 kids.
Abortion is also absolutely not about women’s “healthcare” though many pro-abortion advocates say this. You can read my argument against this lie here if interested: https://wakeforestgazette.com/nc-doctors-raise-red-flags-over-abortion-ban/
Also, rather than re-type it here, please read my reply to Suz on the provisions of SB 20.
And you don’t get it at all. Women being forced to carry a child to term that has already perished. You have no right to judge those whose shoes you have not walked in.
In many states drs can be arrested for doing a DNC a on an ectopic pregnancy and miscarriages. This has gone too far and is just getting worse.
What happens to a violent man who rapes a child. Not much. Women get tried for it. I am prolife but this ruling is over the top and will kill many women.
In. Asked of rape me. And boys get off as
“Boys will be Boys”
Hypocritical.
It’s clear you have a lot of hostility towards men- all of us, apparently, which is both sad and ironic given your admonition about not judging. Who is the hypocrite now?
That aside, until and unless you can point to the part if the bill that would require a woman to “be forced to carry a child to term that has already perished,” you just sound like someone that is unhinged, and it is not possible to have a rational discussion with you.
I have explained the bill to you, but I cannot understand it for you