N.C. Republicans are determined to carry to term an abortion bill that is a wolf in sheep’s clothing and an incredible detriment to the health of women.
Last week’s bill, which has passed the Senate, requires that all abortion clinics meet similar standards to ambulatory surgery centers — and only one clinic in the state presently meets this standard.
The doublethink required to reconcile quasi-religious political policy with a bill that professes to protect the health of women is staggering.
North Carolina’s two bishops are campaigning for Catholics to call their House representatives to tell them to support the bill. Curiously enough, Bishop Michael Burbidge said in a statement that a woman ought to be “guaranteed safeguards” when seeking an abortion.
What exactly he meant by “safeguards” I do not know, but supporters of the bill are clearly trying to limit access to clinics as much as possible while couching it in language that suggests they care about a woman’s safety.
You can bet the Republican legislature is “safeguarding” a woman’s access to the care she wants.
Before abortion was legal, unnamed hundreds of thousands were forced to go underground for abortions, and thousands were either injured or died.
The entire debate over abortion is mishandled and archaic, seemingly on both sides. Activists ought to shift the weight of their argument to education and health care.
If supporters of the bill were honest about their intentions to end abortion and realistic in their means, they’d introduce competent sex education, a health care system that provides birth control and services and raise the standard of living, so that the children with us now may have a safer environment to grow in.
I recently went to the hospital for what was discovered to be a testicular torsion. Men are notoriously stubborn about going to the hospital, especially when it comes to their genitals, and I realized through the awkwardness and poking and prodding that women have to endure worse clinical humiliation while being persecuted by the state.
