Point of View: NC Lawmakers Wily Ways on Women’s Health

BY LISA LEVENSTEIN

The North Carolina legislature is once again deceiving the public. While cutting appropriations for essential social programs and services, the recently released Senate budget proposal includes an increase in funding for the Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship. This anti-abortion organization sustains more than half of North Carolina’s so-called crisis pregnancy centers.

Most other institutions in the state, including our public schools, have been forced to make do with less. Yet senators have proposed increasing funding for the fellowship from $250,000 to $300,000.

North Carolina currently has more than 120 CPCs. These centers masquerade as medical facilities, with fancy ultrasound machines and staff members wearing scrubs and lab coats. Yet the vast majority of these centers employ no trained medical professionals.

Their goal is ideological, not medical: to convince women not to terminate their pregnancies and to dissuade them from using birth control.

CPCs not only refuse to provide or refer for abortion care or birth control, they also frequently give women medically inaccurate information. Many CPCs tell their clients that abortion causes breast cancer and future miscarriages (it does not) and that no method of birth control is effective.

The deception lies not only in the tactics used by CPCs but in the way the Senate is portraying its support of these centers. The increased funding comes out of a block grant designated to protect “maternal and child health.”

If Republicans truly cared about maternal and child health,  they would help women in North Carolina obtain comprehensive medical treatment from trained professionals, as well as income supports, housing assistance, legal protections, education, and child care services. These are the essential building blocks of women’s health, not misleading information.

Instead, the Senate is forging ahead with cuts to essential services. The state’s refusal to expand Medicaid has left more than half a million North Carolinians uninsured. And the proposed budget includes the increased tightening of eligibility standards for Medicaid and significant cuts to programs that serve children, the elderly and the disabled.

Women benefit from these programs and are often the ones who staff them as home health aides, school nurses and day care center workers. Reducing spending will jeopardize increasing numbers of North Carolinians’ health and put more women out of jobs.

Less than a year ago, the Senate passed a bill that required abortion clinics to meet license standards similar to those of ambulatory surgical centers. Only one abortion facility in the state meets these standards, which are not necessary for a simple medical procedure such as abortion and are not required for other types of outpatient surgery. Republicans hid the ambulatory surgical center provision in a bill that dealt with Islamic law and introduced it on a Tuesday evening without informing the public.

However, the true intent became clear when anti-abortion organizations such as the N.C. Values Coalition, the N.C. Family Policy Council, and N.C. Right to Life descended on Raleigh to lobby and testify in favor of the new rulings.

It’s time to stop the deception and back-door tactics. If the North Carolina legislature is going to insist on taking money from essential health care services to fund sham clinics that provide patients with false information, Republicans need to admit that women’s health is not their true priority.

Pregnant women in North Carolina deserve honest health care delivered by medical professionals. And our government needs to stop diverting the money for their care to pay for propaganda dressed up in lab coats.

>>Lisa Levenstein is associate professor of history at UNC-Greensboro.  Cross posted with permission