NC Senate Bill 20: Saving Children, Women and Families

Aubrey Tuell:
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the New Hanover County GOP podcast. I’m Aubrey Tuell, your Secretary of the New Hanover County Republican Party. Today I’m with Tami with NC Values Coalition. They do a lot of amazing work for pro-life and pro-family values here in North Carolina. Today, we’re going to be discussing Senate Bill 20, which is the care for Women, Children and Families Act. So, Tami, I want to get right into the meat of this bill, because there’s so much misinformation that’s going out about what this bill does and what this bill does not do. So let’s get into it. What exactly does this bill do?

North Carolina Senate Bill 20: Care for Women, Children and Families Act

Tami Fitzgerald:
Well, first of all, thank you for having me on today, Aubrey. And it’s a pleasure to be here. Basically, this bill rolls back the current abortion level, the restriction on abortion from 20 weeks to 12 weeks and allows exceptions for rape, incest, life of the mother and fetal abnormality. But that’s not the whole of it. The bill has a lot of other pieces to it. Primarily, it places some pretty strict restrictions on chemical abortion. We’ve never had informed consent for chemical abortion, which specifically outlines the risks of the procedure to women who are seeking to have pills to take their abortion. And so this bill requires all the risks and complications be explained for chemical abortion and for surgical abortion in person by the doctor who’s going to perform the abortion and then the woman has to have a 72 hour waiting period before she can go in and get the abortion. In North Carolina, they maintained the current requirement that women who want a chemical abortion have to have the first pill administered by the doctor. So this bill would prohibit dispensing the chemical pills either through the mail from a pharmacy or some other way if someone just directly gave them to the woman. And it also makes advertising illegal for these pills. And that’s how a lot of women are getting abortion pills illegally, is they’re ordering them from India, from the UK, from California or New York, and the pills are shipped right to their door.

Tami Fitzgerald:
And so women are doing what we call do it yourself abortions, where they have the abortion either in the toilet or in the bathtub at home without the supervision and care of a physician. So this bill will actually protect women from that type of do it yourself process and will help women stay within the ten weeks that is indicated for the abortion pills by the FDA itself. There are so many pieces to this bill, though, Aubrey. I mean, the bill has a lot of funding in it and has closed some loopholes in areas of the law that will provide a safety net of care for women. And that is the goal here, to make women who find themselves in a difficult situation with an unplanned pregnancy to give them enough care that they will want to choose life instead of choosing abortion. And we know that 76% of women who have an abortion say that if they had different circumstances, they would choose life. They would prefer not to do the abortion. So this bill acknowledges that by providing funding and care for women and funding for adoption, funding for pregnancy care centers, for pregnancy homes for child care, to complete a college degree, it provides for maternal care and infant mortality, more funding. And so the bill has a lot of provisions that really will protect women.

Funding for Women and Families

Aubrey Tuell:
That’s awesome. I truly love how you touched on the funding aspect of things, because when we do look at the statistics of when most North Carolina abortions are performed, we do find that they’re in the 20 to 29 age range, which is myself included. And so being a woman in that situation, having the funding access to that is going to be very crucial for women ultimately seeking more help and maybe this procedure at all.

Tami Fitzgerald:
So the childcare provisions alone are huge. You know, it’s going to help women, even women who aren’t in an unplanned pregnancy, which is amazing. They’ve made a $75 million investment in giving access to child care. And that’s huge.

Aubrey Tuell:
Absolutely, truly remarkable.

Tami Fitzgerald:
So overall, the funding is $160 Million for women in this bill.

Aubrey Tuell:
That’s amazing. Wow. That’s. I would say, honestly, I would classify this legislation as one of the strongest pro-life pieces of legislation throughout our country. Would you agree with that statement?

Tami Fitzgerald:
Yeah, I think it it sets a new standard across the country of providing not just restrictions on abortion, but providing the funding that give women options so they can choose life instead of abortion. So they don’t feel like they’re pushed up against the wall. And that’s the only choice they have.

Misinformation from the Liberal Left

Aubrey Tuell:
Yeah, that’s awesome. So I know we talked about what this bill does do, but like I said, there’s a ton of misinformation, so now I want to clear everything up. What does this bill not do?

Tami Fitzgerald:
Well, you know, some of the things I’m hearing in the news are just unbelievable. And, of course, a lot of this is these are talking points directly from Planned Parenthood. And a lot of lazy reporters will just take the Planned Parenthood talking points and not try to find out if they’re accurate or not. And a lot of these should be fact checked because they get five Pinocchios. You know, one of the things they’re saying is that this this bill is going to cause doctors confusion about whether they can provide miscarriage care when a woman has a dead baby and the baby needs to be delivered basically the same way an abortion would occur. And what they’re saying is just false, because the bill specifically says that it doesn’t apply to to miscarriage care. And every doctor knows the difference between an abortion and a miscarriage is that with a miscarriage, the baby dies in utero. And with an abortion, the baby dies because of the abortion and with a miscarriage the death is not planned. It’s not wanted. It’s a natural cause. And yet with the abortion, the death is caused by the abortion. And so this is deliberate deception on the part of the abortion industry that the press is unfortunately not checking out. One of the other things that I’ve heard is that it’s going to cause women to have forced birth. They called me on Twitter the other day a forced birth person or advocate, and I said, no, I’m pro-life. That means I care about the humanity of the unborn child, the child in the womb. That is a person from conception forward, and that’s not forced birth. That is a beautiful, joyful experience to be pregnant and give birth to a child.

Aubrey Tuell:
Absolutely. It is such a beautiful experience. Well, thank you so much for answering those two questions. I feel like we cleared up so much of the misinformation that’s going on in our media right now. I know myself as a college student, I’ve just heard so much false narratives being pushed amongst my generation, and it’s honestly very sad to hear these people that haven’t even read the bill push these false narratives.

NC 20 Is Not A Total Ban On Abortion

Tami Fitzgerald:
The other thing I left this out, I should have said this, Aubrey, but one of the big accusations they’re making about the bill is that it’s a ban on abortion.

Aubrey Tuell:
I was just going to ask you.

Tami Fitzgerald:
Yeah, insinuating it’s a total ban, which it is not, because the bill still allows abortion up to 12 weeks of pregnancy during the first trimester. And of course, it allows abortion for rape, incest, life of the mother and fetal anomaly, which we already talked about. So to call it a ban is just really deceptive and misleading and just a big fat lie that gets five Pinocchios, too. And so there are a lot of misconceptions. What are some of the things you’ve heard, Aubrey, that I might, you know, dispel or put to rest? You probably hear different things. Since you’re younger than I am, you probably hear a lot of different things than I do.

Aubrey Tuell:
Yeah. So a lot of the things I was actually looking at a statement the other day from the North Carolina Council for Women Chair Annette Taylor said SB 20 is not only a dangerous 12 week abortion ban, it will ban reproductive freedom for North Carolina women earlier and in some cases indefinitely, which now, having read the bill I know, is just completely false. But one thing that is being misconstrued in my generation is the issue with ectopic pregnancies. Having read the bill, the bill strictly outlines ectopic pregnancies.

Tami Fitzgerald:
Well, yes. And just for those of your listeners who don’t know what an ectopic pregnancy is, it’s when the unborn child, the fetus attaches in the fallopian tube instead of the uterine wall. And one of the dangers of abortion pills is if you have an ectopic pregnancy and you don’t know it and you take these abortion pills, the mother and the baby will die. And so there’s a good chance the mother will die. And that’s why it’s important to have a doctor’s care, even when you take pills. I mean, a lot of people are misrepresenting the safety and efficacy of the pills. 1 in 5 women who take these abortion pills have complications and the abortion pills increase emergency room visits four times over. So these are not necessarily safe. I mean, there are other pills that you must take in the presence of a doctor for the first time. I have migraines. And when Imitrex first came out as a migraine solution, I had to take the pill and the presence of my doctor and sit there and wait two hours to see if I reacted to it. So this is not an abnormal or unusual concept. It’s really for the safety of the woman. And you would think that abortion advocates would want to keep women safe. They you know, they think they own the narrative on women’s safety and women’s health. But the absolute opposite is true, because they could care less about women’s safety. They just want to profit. It’s $1 billion industry.

Aubrey Tuell:
Absolutely. I think you brought up some really great facts there. Could we touch more about on the safety of taking the pill or getting an abortion versus the safety of the natural part of life, which is pregnancy?

Tami Fitzgerald:
Sure. Well, you know, a lot of these abortion advocates are claiming that it’s safer to have an abortion than it is to give birth to a baby. And I don’t know where they get their statistics from, but that’s just simply not true. I mean, giving giving birth to a baby is one of the most natural things that occurs in in a woman’s life because we were created to give birth. And so that’s just not true. And they’re claiming that forcing women to have babies is unsafe. Now, I just take issue with the claim that we’re forcing women to have babies. I mean, basically what we’re saying is women can just go out and have sex indiscriminately and then they should be able to abort the baby as birth control. And women are not forced to have sex any more than they’re forced to have babies. Having a baby is a natural consequence of sexual activity.

The Racial Targetting of Abortions

Aubrey Tuell:
Absolutely. And so just for a moment, I’d like to touch on how this will affect different ethnicities in North Carolina. I got an email today. It was titled Black State Senators An Abortion Ban Will Worsen Black Maternal Maternal Mortality Rates in North Carolina. After doing some research, actually 49.3% of North Carolina abortions were performed on African-American women. How can we look at a fact like that? And then the other side put a statement like that forth?

Tami Fitzgerald:
Well, it’s just dishonest. It’s all the best thing I can say about it, because the truth is it’s going to save more black babies than than other races of babies, because as you pointed out, which is what I was going to say, is 49% of the abortions in our state are done on black women, meaning these are black children that are being aborted and they’re being aborted at a much higher rate than any other race in our state. And of course, we know from 10 to 15 years ago that after some research was done, that’s because Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers have targeted black women for abortion. They they locate their clinics near black communities, and they actually target women with advertising in the black community. And of course, that was the origin of the abortion movement. It was a eugenics movement and it was started to actually exterminate black people and people with disabilities. And Margaret Sanger was the founder of the abortion movement. She was the founder of Planned Parenthood. They’ve now taken her off all of their materials because they’ve had to acknowledge that she was a racist and a eugenicist. And it’s an ugly history that abortion has, that Planned Parenthood has. And it all started around the concept of eugenics.

Aubrey Tuell:
Absolutely. I totally agree with everything you just said. And I think you brought up some really great points about the history of abortion and the eugenics behind it, which is just so, so awful and despicable. Um.

Aubrey Tuell:
But I’d like to get more on to Governor Cooper’s recent statement that he said he said experts confirm that this legislation is not a 12 week ban, as Republicans claim, but an extreme bill that bans many abortions altogether. What do you have to say about that?

Tami Fitzgerald:
Well, he’s upset because there for the first time there are restrictions on chemical abortion. And the abortion clinics themselves are part of this bill is codifying the regulations that we have now on abortion clinics and tightening those up a little bit, making them stricter so that abortion clinics have to comply with the same health and safety standards that other ambulatory surgical facilities comply with. And Planned Parenthood immediately made a statement after the bill came out and they said that none of their clinics currently comply with those rules. And, you know, that’s pitiful. We have 14 abortion clinics in North Carolina, and not one of them complies to the same safety standards that your oral surgery clinic does or your outpatient gallbladder surgery center does. And so making them comply with the same cleanliness and safety standards that other outpatient surgery clinics comply with is a step in the right direction for women because it will protect their health. And several years ago, I think it was about eight years ago, there was a big campaign about abortion clinics exposing the fact that in North Carolina very few of them ever got annual inspections. In fact, some of them had gone for ten years without an inspection. And the one in Asheville was found to have blood on the walls and dirty floors. And this was all exposed in the newspaper. And so we were able to pass some regulations at that point that required them to have annual inspections and comply with some standards. This bill is just a continuation of those rules that were not in statute but were in the rules. And there are some new safety requirements that will actually protect women from unsafe standards.

Aubrey Tuell:
That’s amazing. I think just the safety aspect of this bill alone, I mean, it focused a large portion of the bill is focused on safety and procedures that abortion clinics have to abide by. And as you mentioned earlier, the fact that they aren’t operating on the same standards that maybe your dentist would or a local oral surgeon or something like that, It’s just it’s it’s absurd to me. So are there any other safety aspects that the bill touches that you want to go over?

Tami Fitzgerald:
Well, a couple of the things that this bill does. You know, we’ve tried to pass some pro-life laws in the past several years that the governor has vetoed, and we’ve not been able to get past his veto. This bill includes all of them. It includes a ban on late term abortions, specifically partial birth abortion. It also requires that a baby born as the result of a failed abortion must be given the same medical care any other any other infant would be given. So that’s the Born-alive Abortion Survivors Act. And it also prohibits eugenic abortions for race, Down syndrome and the sex of the baby. And so all of those that we have not been able to get past Governor Cooper’s veto will go into effect with this bill when the legislature overrides the governor’s veto.

Aubrey Tuell:
That’s awesome. Just so many positive things going on in this bill to protect not only women, children, but also maybe people that do have a disability. So it’s just I’m very happy to see this bill be on the floor and looking forward to seeing it getting passed with our supermajority here in North Carolina.

Supported By A Majority of North Carolinians

Aubrey Tuell:
Just one last thing I wanted to touch on before we wrap up. 88% of North Carolina abortions were performed before 12 weeks. So I’m just really having trouble finding what this big uproar is about. Considering that almost 90% of abortions currently were performed before this ban, and it’s not even I mean, there is exceptions for up to 20 weeks. Could we touch more on that aspect of it as well?

Tami Fitzgerald:
Yes. You know, our organization, NC Values Coalition, had hoped to get a heartbeat bill passed that would save 26,000 babies a year. This bill only saves 4000 a year. It’s not as much as we wanted, but it’s a step in the right direction. But the truth is, I mean, no matter what restrictions you put on abortion, even as light as this 12 week restriction is the left, the pro-abortion industry, Governor Cooper, The Democrats are all going to have a full blown conniption fit, you know, because abortion is sacred and you cannot touch it. It’s the it’s the sacred cow. And so the truth is, you know, probably a six week ban would have gotten as much press and outrage as this bill is getting. But this is a step in the right direction. Um, you know, we did some polling earlier this year and we found that 62% of voters in North Carolina believe that abortion should be limited by 12 weeks of pregnancy. And that’s the outside. 12 weeks was the the, you know, highest number of weeks. Most of them were more in the six week range to conception. And so this is not out of line with public sentiment. This bill is not. And Governor Cooper and his allies really want abortion on demand without restrictions up to the day of delivery, and they want taxpayers to fund it with their taxpayer dollars.

Aubrey Tuell:
Yeah, just absolutely crazy in my opinion to even think about implementing something like that. I’m definitely very excited for this bill and what’s to come after this bill so much, just so much hope for women and children in North Carolina. And I’m just so excited. But is there anything else you wanted to say before we hop off?

Call Your Legislators

Tami Fitzgerald:
Well, I do want to say that your listeners ought to call their legislators and stress to them how important it is to vote to override Governor Cooper’s veto. I don’t think he’s going to be able to peel off any Republicans, but we just want to make sure we want to support our legislators, our Republican legislators who all voted for the bill. And we want to ask them to do it again and to make sure that we don’t let Governor Cooper’s veto keep the biggest advancement in pro-life law in 50 years from passing.

Aubrey Tuell:
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Tami, for all of the positive and inspiring messages for women and children and families in North Carolina. And thank you so much for coming on the show today. And I just want to thank your organization and all you guys have done to promote pro-life and pro-family values in North Carolina. So thank you.

Tami Fitzgerald:
ncvalues.org. Wanted to get that website in there.

Aubrey Tuell:
All right. Of course everyone visit NCvalues.org. And once again, thank you so much Tami Fitzgerald. You have a wonderful night.

Tami Fitzgerald:
Thank you, Aubrey.

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