NC abortion bills aren’t about improving medical care, they’re about shaming people

Welcome to NC Voices, where leaders, readers and experts from across North Carolina can speak on issues affecting our communities. Send submissions of 300 words or fewer to opinion@newsobserver.com.

NC abortion bills are dangerous

As a North Carolina family physician providing comprehensive care across the lifespan, including prenatal, miscarriage and abortion care, I know that N.C. Senate Bill 405 and House Bill 453 are blatant attempts to insert politics into the patient-provider relationship.

These bills undermine my patients’ ability to determine what’s best for them and their families in complicated, urgent health situations. That’s why Physicians for Reproductive Health, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the NC OB/GYN Society oppose these bills.

Threatening physicians with various penalties for providing appropriate, necessary medical care is draconian. These bills have nothing to do with improving medical care and everything to do with shaming people who need abortion care.

The lawmakers behind these bills know they are solutions in search of fictional problems. So why propose them? To advance harmful efforts to push abortion out of reach.

I cannot emphasize enough how dangerous these bills are. Legislators are grossly distorting the care my colleagues and I provide. Their medically inaccurate, inflammatory language encourages harassment and stigma towards medical professionals and patients.

Our legislature only became a puppet of the national agenda to ban abortion in the last decade. Recent family medicine and OB/GYN graduates are choosing not to practice in our state because of it.

North Carolinians are already subject to bans on insurance coverage for abortion, mandatory 72-hour waiting periods, parental consent requirements for young people, and restrictions on medication abortion and abortion later in pregnancy. None of these make abortion safer; they just make it harder to get care.

I’m tired of begging politicians to listen to patients and providers. I urge the N.C. legislature to redirect its focus to passing fact-based laws actually advancing the health and well-being of North Carolinians, rather than anti-science laws harming us.

Dr. Erica Pettigrew

Hillsborough family physician, Physicians for Reproductive Health fellow

Black and brown students

Decades before the COVID pandemic, Black and brown students experienced harm in the public education system in North Carolina.

According to a State Board of Education report, between 2019 and 2020, Black male students, followed by Native American males, remained the highest group suspended in public schools.

Black and brown students have been sitting in underfunded schools and trying to learn, sometimes from teachers unwilling to use practices that valued the cultural experiences of these young people. Before and during COVID, these students and their families fought for quality education and demanded schools “do better.”

We cannot return to normalcy in our public schools. If North Carolina and school districts are willing to create a new normalcy, the $122 billion allotted for public K-12 schools through the American Rescue Plan Act Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief fund may provide just the opportunity.

According to federal government requirements, school districts must submit reopening plans and identify evidence-based interventions to support underserved students. These plans must include ideas and input from stakeholders like students, families and other community folks.

Will school districts listen to Black and brown students and their families?

I applaud a recent report by Village of Wisdom, a Durham nonprofit that worked with parent researchers from Durham and Orange counties. The report lays out conditions that Black students, their parents and teachers envision for public schools. The findings may be an initial blueprint for the kinds of interventions public schools need to support underserved students.

We need a new normalcy where public schools are places where Black and brown students thrive and feel valued. We need school districts to finally listen to the dreams of Black and brown students, their families and to respond accordingly.

Dawn X. Henderson

Co-director, Collective Health and Education Equity Research Collaborative

This story was originally published May 25, 2021 at 12:17 PM.