No more barriers

Published April 24, 2015

Editorial by Durham Herald-Sun, April 24, 2015.

For at least the eighth time in the past four years, the General Assembly is moving to erect more barriers to women’s ability to obtain a legal, constitutionally sanctioned abortion.

Cloaked ironically in the language of protection of women, the latest restrictions would make obtaining an abortion more difficult. The State House passed HB465, requiring a 72-hour waiting period after a woman receives information from an abortion provider before the procedure can be performed.

As critics of the bill have pointed out, the three-day wait, longer than any state other than South Dakota, Missouri and Utah requires, poses a particular burden on lower-income women. For many women, an abortion requires a sometimes lengthy trip to one of the few places in the state where they are performed.

An initial version of the bill would have shrunk that number even further, by forbidding physicians at medical schools at UNC-CH and East Carolina from performing abortions and teaching medical students how to perform them. The bill’s sponsor dropped that provision after the schools said it could impact their accreditation, but she has said the issue is still alive.

That trip can result in a need for overnight stay – not, three or four nights, often at the expense of a hotel room. Women in many jobs may find it difficult or costly to take time from work. Child care, already an issue, becomes even greater.

When the House Health Committee debated and endorsed the bill on Wednesday, Democrat Rep. Verla Insko of Chapel Hill called the bill “paternalistic,” according to the Associated Press, and said it takes away “a woman’s right to have control over her own body.”

The bill’s proponents see nothing wrong with such paternalism. “It doesn’t limit someone’s choice, but it does give them more time and respects them and it protects their health,” said Republican Rep. Susan Martin of Wilson the bill’s primary sponsor.

Democrat Tricia Cotham of Matthews, in floor debate Thursday, would have none of that. “The wait period is simply about creating barriers,” she said. “My womb and my uterus re not up for your political grab.”

The relentless effort to make abortion more difficult has for years been an end-around effort to thwart the legal right to abortion. The Supreme Court may ultimately reverse its 1972 ruling that it is a constitutionally protected right. We hope not, but that at least would be a clean joining of the issue.

Rather, we have what Fayetteville Democratic Rep. Rick Glazer of Fayetteville called Thursday “nothing short of constitutional evisceration by 1,000 cuts.”

The State Senate, where the bill now goes, should stand against that evisceration.


April 24, 2015 at 9:00 am
Richard L Bunce says:

Let's get the government out of all medical decisions including all FDA limitations on treatments and State licensing of providers... not just this one medical decision.