Our Bodies, Our Ballots
As featured in the August 29, 2024 edition of the Transylvania Times, which may be found here
It has been a little over two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the decision that recognized a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. Women in North Carolina have seen their rights eroded even further because Republican lawmakers think the state knows what’s best for them.
North Carolina’s GOP-controlled legislature overrode Governor Cooper’s veto to pass a law banning abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy. For cases of rape or incest, they made it illegal after 20 weeks. The new law also creates medically unnecessary and life-endangering obstacles to abortion care. Regardless of the circumstances, a woman seeking an abortion must make appointments for three in-person visits, where she is forced to listen to state-mandated, non-scientific, anti-abortion counseling and receive a medically unnecessary ultrasound. She must then wait 72 hours before the procedure.
These burdens do not fall equally on all North Carolinians. The restrictions affect folks who already face significant barriers to accessing health care: people who live in rural areas; people of color; people who have a hard time making ends meet; people who don’t speak English as their first language; young people who are uninsured or prohibited from using their insurance for abortion care.
Access is further limited to these at-risk populations by the lack of facilities. Although demand has increased 44% over the last four years in North Carolina, there are fewer clinics to meet those needs.
Not only has demand increased, so too has public support for abortion rights. Sixty percent of women seeking abortion already have a child. According to Pew Research, a majority of Americans, about six-in-ten (63%), say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
The claims of anti-abortion activists that abortion is dangerous is simply not true. Indeed, pregnancy and childbirth are far more dangerous. This is especially true early in pregnancy, when most abortions take place. Nearly 93% are performed at less than 13 weeks' gestation according to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.
GOP lawmakers at the state and federal levels have signaled their intent to further erode reproductive rights. Project 2025, the extremist policy blueprint for a second Trump presidency, calls on Republican leaders at every level to deploy “existing federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously comply with statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion.” In other words, to enforce a national abortion ban.
Harmful legislation has damaging statewide impacts to the reproductive health care landscape in North Carolina. The state has seen a heightened shortage of OB-GYNs and primary care doctors who don’t want to practice in North Carolina due to fear of government prosecution for doing their jobs. Medical schools have seen a 6.4% drop in applications to OB-GYN residency programs in states with gestational limits on abortion, including North Carolina.
Each person’s circumstances are unique, and state lawmakers can never hope to foresee all of the reasons an abortion might be the best or only option. Ham-handed government intrusion, therefore, is not only disrespectful of a woman’s autonomy, it is also dangerous. Across the United States, more than 100 pregnant women in medical distress who sought help from emergency rooms were turned away or negligently treated since 2022. Women, in consultation with their doctors, must be trusted to make decisions about their own lives, bodies, and futures. Women are right to demand respect, empathy, and the recognition of their inalienable right to make decisions about their own bodies.
One explanation for the profound mismatch between government policy and these fundamental rights for women is the lack of representation in government. Although women compose more than half of the U.S. population they do not hold a proportionate amount of political power, especially at the state level.
Women are excluded from political power in many ways. For instance, political ambition is a trait that tends to be discouraged in young girls while being fostered in boys. As women they are less likely to become political candidates because of culturally-defined expectations that family caretaking obligations should fall disproportionately on them. On average, women have to be asked seven times before they decide to run for office. Women’s campaigns are more likely to be derailed by negative attacks and by rhetoric aimed at disqualifying them in voters’ minds for reasons unrelated to the offices they seek. As a result, women also have a harder time raising funds. Once in office, women tend to work harder than their male colleagues yet are less successful in getting their bills passed.
Yet as Supreme Court Justice Alito asserted two years ago, despite these formidable political headwinds,“women are not without electoral or political power.” This November voters will use this power to map a better future for all women for we are not going back.
Notes:
Carter, Dan, “Mandate for Leadership, 2025: The Roadmap for a Second Trump Administration,”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/06/roe-alito-democracy-womens-rights-equality/
https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/induced-abortion-united-states
https://states.guttmacher.org/policies/north-carolina/abortion-policies
https://www.guttmacher.org/report/abortion-clinics-united-states-2020-2024
https://www.wral.com/story/a-timeline-of-abortion-access-in-north-carolina/20841948/
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/06/1096676197/7-persistent-claims-about-abortion-fact-checked
https://apnews.com/article/pregnant-women-emergency-room-ectopic-er-edd66276d2f6c412c988051b618fb8f9
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/14/upshot/who-gets-abortions-in-america.html
https://www.npr.org/2014/05/05/309832898/best-way-to-get-women-to-run-for-office-ask-repeatedly