How in good conscience can Rep. Tricia Cotham deny NC residents the abortion access she had? | Opinion

Republicans in North Carolina have passed a sweeping abortion bill that further restricts access to abortion care — a bill filled with medical misinformation, misdirection and false narratives about abortion.

In practice, it will ban medication abortion after 10 weeks and impose insurmountable barriers on people trying to get an abortion early in pregnancy. The new restrictions found in the 46-pages of Senate Bill 20 aim to shut down abortion clinics, make it unworkable for doctors to adequately provide care, and increase medically unnecessary barriers for people seeking an abortion even before 12 weeks.

In 1975, at 15 years old, I experienced the nightmare of one of those “back alley” abortions, and I don’t want to see another generation go through that.

All abortion bans and other restrictions on reproductive health care fall hardest on people who already face discriminatory obstacles to health care — particularly Black, Indigenous and other people of color, people with disabilities, those living in rural areas, young people, undocumented people, LGBTQ people, and those who have difficulty making ends meet. We should be increasing access to the full range of reproductive health care, not continuing to chip away at it.

Today, women and girls who are already struggling to access health care across this country. They are again being put at risk of having to resort to unsafe abortions because politicians have decided they should interfere in our private health care decisions.

I call on our elected officials in the legislature to set aside politics and focus on patient needs by upholding Gov. Roy Cooper’s promised veto of this bill. As a Mecklenburg County resident, I call on Rep. Tricia Cotham in particular to uphold her commitment to voters in Mecklenburg County who trusted her with their vote in November 2022, and to uphold the veto.

Cotham has been open about sharing her abortion experience, and has long spoken out strongly in favor of protecting access to abortion. In 2015 when she shared her abortion story on the N.C. House floor she said “Abortion is a deeply personal decision. It should not be a political debate. My womb and my uterus is not up for your political grab.”

I call on Cotham to give people an opportunity to have the same access to care that she did when she had her abortion. I call on her to denounce the extreme power grab by North Carolina’s Republican Party to control women’s bodies, further disenfranchise Black voters, discriminate against the LBGTQ+ community, disenfranchise our public schools, and increase the risk of our children being gunned down in their schools by making guns more accessible.

Since the Dobbs decision came down in June 2022, people across the country and in North Carolina have been more vocal about their support for abortion access, including nearly 4 in 10 voters who identify as Republican. Respecting people’s bodily autonomy is not a Republican or Democrat issue — it’s an issue of trust and respect for the 1 in 4 women in our communities who have had an abortion. It’s an issue of supporting people with complicated pregnancies, medical emergencies and the need to take back control over their lives.

I call on Cotham to show that her conscience is more bothered by this terrible bill than it was by the mean tweets she said contributed to her party switch. She must push to stop this dangerous bill from becoming law.

Janice Robinson is NC Program Director for Red Wine & Blue, a nonprofit that mobilizes the diversity of suburban women across the U.S.