Brunswick Beacon, 10.20.22
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and abolished the right to privacy, women have suffered horrific abuse from Republican-controlled state governments.
A 10-year-old Ohio rape victim was refused an abortion. An Arizona pharmacy denied a 14-year-old’s life-saving medication although she wasn’t pregnant, because it sometimes causes abortions.
Texas oncologists now make pregnant cancer victims get sicker before treating them. Normally, chemo-therapy begins immediately, ending pregnancy. But Texas allows abortion only “at risk of death.” Come back when you’re more nearly dead!
Another woman’s ultrasound revealed a “blighted ovum” miscarriage. Texas law kept her doctors from performing the standard removal procedure. Instead, she was forced to carry a dead fetus for weeks. “I felt like a walking coffin,” she said tearfully, “it’s gone, and you’re just walking around carrying it.”
If you think it can’t happen here, think again. Ted Budd and David Rouzer cosponsored H.R.1011, declaring every fertilized egg a “preborn human person.” Their bill bans abortion nationwide without exception and makes the destruction of a fertilized egg, even a “blighted ovum,” murder. North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature wants to override Gov. Cooper’s veto, which is all that currently protects women’s reproductive rights. If Frank Iler wins Brunswick County’s District 17, Republicans could end them.
If young girls and women can be forced to give birth against their will, why not treat the root of the problem? Here’s looking at you, Bud!
Pass a National Impregnation Prevention/Insemination Treatment Act (NIP/IT), requiring men who impregnate unwilling mothers to get vasectomies. They’re quick and 95% reversible. By comparison, gestation lasts nine months. Health complications can last a lifetime. Does NIP/IT seem extreme? It’s less extreme than forced birth!
There’s a better choice. On Nov. 8, choose leaders who will keep government’s hands off our bodies: Cheri Beasley, Charles Graham and Eric Terashima.
Shelley Allen
Holden Beach