What’s the matter with North Carolina?

North Carolina's Republican-controlled legislature has been extremely busy this year, and not in a good way. Here’s what the representatives of that fine state are serving up for their constituents.

Voter Suppression:
The Supreme Court recently gutted the historic Voting Rights Act (see my post for background on the Voting Rights Act and the scope of that Supreme Court decision).

As everyone except five of the Justices foresaw (and that’s giving them more credit than they perhaps deserve), immediately after the ruling, states began flagrantly changing their voting laws. Not to be outdone, North Carolina passed a whole slew of ‘reforms’ intended to make voting more difficult.

Why do I make that claim? Judge for yourself. To begin with, North Carolina enacted strict photo ID laws which may keep over 300,000 eligible citizens from voting. These laws are designed to prevent in-person voter fraud and work on the same principle that enables my wind charms to repel leprechauns. 

Keep in mind that not just any photo ID is acceptable for voting in North Carolina. You can only use a driver’s license, a passport, military or veteran’s ID or a tribal card. No student ID cards. This will make it much harder for students to vote, but Republicans believe that preventing a largely Democratic demographic from voting is a small price to pay to remove the nonexistent threat of in-person voter fraud. 

Don’t think photo ID requirements are the only obstacles put in the path of North Carolinian voters. The Young Turks gives a great run down of what’s been passed in that state. The first minute has the list of changes, the rest is explanation and discussion.

As you can see, between making it harder to register to vote, curtailing early voting, and allowing more intimidation at the polls, the North Carolina legislators are doing everything they can to ensure that as few people as possible cast a vote.

I just want to comment on one new provision. Before this bill, if there were long lines at a polling place, that precinct could be kept open until everyone who was already in line had voted. No more. Now, if you haven’t made it to the ballot box by the time the polls close, you’re out of luck. This is not an unlikely scenario, by the way. During the last election, there were some very long lines to vote. 


2012 Presidential Election wait times

Note that these are just median wait times, meaning half the people waited longer, sometimes much longer. How hard do you think it’s going to be for North Carolina to orchestrate the distribution of their polling places so that people only end up getting shut out in Democratic leaning areas?

Closing polling places exactly on time won’t disenfranchise nearly as many people as some of the other changes will, but it goes to the core of this entire legislative package. There is no reason to close polling places in people's faces, or to cut down on early voting, or to eliminate registration drives in schools except to be malicious and to hope that you can prevent people from voting.

Anti-gun control laws:
Congratulations, North Carolinians. You can now bring your loaded weapons not only onto colleges and universities, but also children’s playgrounds, as long as you keep them locked in your car. You can also bring guns into bars and restaurants (though owner’s are allowed to forbid this if they choose). Cities, townships or other subdivisions are prohibited from passing new rules or regulations about concealed carry.

It’s not a free for all over there though. It’s still illegal to bring a gun into the Governor’s mansion, State Capitol or Courts of Justice.  How nice for North Carolina's officials. I’m sure that’s a relief to parents. The creepy guy watching their kids at the playground may only be a few feet away from the gun in his car, but at least the Governor is safe.

Abortion restrictions:

We can’t close without talking about abortion. North Carolina recently passed a motorcycle safety bill. You’re probably wondering what this has to do with abortion. Obviously, motorcycle safety has nothing to with abortion (one hopes). That didn’t stop North Carolina’s legislators from including the following provisions:

• Insurance plans participating in the new Health Insurance Exchanges cannot pay for abortions (which is interesting because North Carolina is one of the many states refusing to participate in those Exchanges anyway).
• A doctor has to inform the woman that she’ll be having an abortion 24 hours before she can have the procedure. Just to make sure she clearly understands why she's there.
• A doctor has to be present during the abortion, even if it consists of handing the woman a couple of pills. 
• Perhaps most insidious, the bill includes TRAP laws designed to force abortion clinics to close.

A little less than one page about motorcycles was tacked onto the end of this five page bill. Democratic State Rep. and motorcyclist Beverly Earle commented:

I want to let my motorcycle buddies know when I vote against this, it’s not because I don’t care about their safety.

North Carolina already has a law requiring women to have medically unnecessary vaginal ultrasounds. It was part of North Carolina's 2011 Women's Right to Know Act. I guess women in North Carolina have the right to know that their male GOP legislators don't think they should be able to decide what goes into their bodies.

To sum up, North Carolina has passed a trifecta of bills designed to make its citizens much less safe and much less able to complain about it at the polls. However, these gross violations of the public trust have not been lost on North Carolinians, who have been participating in ‘Moral Monday’ protests organized by NAACP President Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, since April 29th. Each week, citizens gather to protest a particular North Carolina bill and they won’t be running out of things to protest any time soon. The 13^th Moral Monday of the year will be held tomorrow.

Worst state in the union to be a young woman

It’s a close race, but right now, the winner of the ‘Worst state in the union to be a young woman’ is…. Ohio!

I know, you thought it was going to be Kansas, North Dakota, or possibly Texas, thanks to Rick Perry’s recent shenanigans. Yes, those states put up good fights, but when you see what kind of anti-woman legislature Ohio has recently passed, I think you’ll agree that Ohio is the clear winner. Here’s what they now have:

Medically unnecessary vaginal ultrasounds. I know what you’re thinking. These days, lots of states force women to have ultrasound wands inserted into their vaginas for no medical reason. Nothing special about that insult to women’s autonomy or to medical personnel’s integrity. Fair enough. Let’s move on.

Doctors must lie to women. In Ohio, doctors must lie to women about whether abortions cause breast cancer (they don’t), whether fetuses feel pain (not at the developmental stages cited), whether abortions increase the risk of infertility (again, nope), and whether abortions are medically risky (if performed legally sans coat hanger, they’re much less so than giving birth). Women would have to wait 48 hours to mull over all that misinformation before getting an abortion.

People pretending to be doctors must lie to women. Cuts to Planned Parenthood mean that many women in Ohio will no longer have access to cancer screenings, contraceptives, and other health services. But good news, money will be available for religious zealots to dress up as doctors and give women anti-abortion propaganda. Besides giving women the kind of false medical information I mentioned above, these ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centers’ also mislead women about how and where to get legal abortions in the hopes that by the time the women figure out the ruse it’s too late. 

Again, these sorts of deceptive practices are by no means unique to Ohio. But don’t worry, there’s more.

TRAP laws. Some states have used Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws to force their abortion clinics to close. An example of this is a law that requires clinics that provide abortions to have doorways that are least an inch wider than whatever size they were when the anti-abortion inspectors came to call. You can imagine that most of these clinics cannot afford to remodel their rooms and hallways to comply with these medically useless laws. Some states only have a single abortion clinic left in the entire state, and laws like this may force even that one to close, effectively outlawing abortion in those states.

Here’s where Ohio really wins this season’s War-On-Women trophy. Ohio passed legislation requiring clinics that perform abortions to have emergency transfer agreements with hospitals. They also banned public hospitals from having such transfer agreements. Yes, you read that right. To run a legal abortion clinic in Ohio, you must have a transfer agreement with a private hospital, which don’t even exist in many parts of the state. Not to mention the fact that private hospitals are often religious and are likely to refuse such an arrangement.

If you are having an abortion and something goes horribly wrong, you can’t be transferred to a public hospital. You’d better hope you’re near a private hospital that won’t choose to let you die on its doorstep. This new law is courtesy of a group of people who like to call themselves ‘pro-life’.

So congratulations, Ohio, on being the worst place in America to raise daughters. And for everyone who lives there, I hope you’ll keep all this in mind come election time.

The wrong question about abortion

There are people who claim to be resolutely against abortion in all cases. A standard ploy to gauge the depth of these people’s conviction on this issue is to pose the question, ‘what if your own daughter became pregnant after being raped?’ Rick Santorum was asked this question during the 2012 Republican Primary race, and he, like others in his situation, answered that he would counsel her to keep the baby. Following exchanges like this, everyone congratulates themselves on having asked and answered such a tough, enlightening question.

I’m not impressed.

To explain why, I’m going to don my biologist hat. Let’s look at things purely from a genetic standpoint.

Santorum’s daughter’s baby, regardless of the circumstances of its conception, would be his biological grandchild. That gives him a powerful incentive to resist her attempts to abort it, even if he normally would be pro-choice (which, of course, he’s not). Seen in this light, asking him his views about his daughter’s theoretical abortion is a pointlessly facile question. Here’s what I hear when reporters ask it: “You say you don’t believe in abortion, but would you still feel that way even if one killed your future grandchild?”

All of a sudden, the stock answer sounds a lot less courageous, doesn't it?

Let’s contrast that question with an alternative question that I’ve never heard someone ask a politician*: ‘What if your wife got pregnant from being raped?’ 

If the daughter chooses not to abort, Santorum’s genes get passed on, very likely with little or no longterm investment on his part. If, on the other hand, his wife doesn’t abort, Santorum will have to invest huge amounts of time, money and energy into rearing someone else’s biological child. That’s quite a different prospect. If I heard a male politician say that he would willingly raise a child that resulted from his wife’s rape, I’d be far more inclined to accept his conviction on the issue of abortion. 

I feel I need to clarify something. Please don’t take this post to mean that I don’t think adoptive parents can love their children just as much as biological parents do. I know that they can and do. My point is that telling someone else to keep a baby, especially when you have a biological incentive for her to do so, is not the same as rearing a baby yourself, especially when you don’t have a biological incentive to do so. Applauding someone for holding the former position is giving credit where none is due.

*If you know of a case where this has happened, leave it in the comments.