Could birth control access be at risk in NC? Dems say yes, but GOP disagrees
With North Carolina's new 12-week abortion ban currently set to take effect Saturday, legislative Democrats are calling for the Republican majority to back a proposal guaranteeing future access to reliable methods of contraception.
Republicans dismissed that concern as a scare tactic.
At a news conference Wednesday, Sen. Lisa Grafstein said she's filed a discharge petition to force a vote on her bill, Senate Bill 540, which would write the right to contraception into state law.
A discharge petition is a parliamentary way to remove a bill from a committee, but it requires a majority vote, which Democrats lack in the Senate. The petitions are rarely successful and are more often filed as a protest.
"While some Republicans have tried to assure the public that they're passing common-sense or mainstream laws, not many of us feel confident that the rights we do have left will not also be attacked," Grafstein, D-Wake, said. "These fears are valid."
In the Dobbs decision sent down from the US Supreme Court a year ago, an opinion filed by Justice Clarence Thomas cited other rulings that were based on the same overturned argument as Roe v Wade. Grafstein noted that Thomas's list included Griswold v Connecticut, the 1965 ruling that guaranteed women access to contraception, as well as the rulings overturning bans on same-sex sexual relationships and same-sex marriage.
"Any substantive due process decision is demonstrably erroneous. We have a duty to correct the error established in those precedents," Thomas wrote in his opinion.
Grafstein said she's calling on Republicans to back her bill "because of the threat that states would be empowered by the Supreme Court to limit access to or use of contraception, just as Justice Thomas has foreshadowed."
Republicans say Democrats are just trying to scare voters. Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said he wasn't aware of any efforts among North Carolina Republican lawmakers to limit contraception.
"The only people I've heard talking about that are Democrats," Berger said. "It's just another instance of trying to scare the public that something may happen that no one has made any serious attempt or has contemplated moving forward with."
Grafstein and Rep. Julie von Haefen, D-Wake, the sponsor of the House version of SB 540, conceded they're not aware of any anti-contraception bills currently filed in North Carolina. But von Haefen said it's important to act proactively. She said many states did not codify abortion before Roe v. Wade was overturned.
"We have to take action now to protect our rights before it's too late," von Haefen said.
"I think a lot of people who were raising the red flag and raising alarms about Roe being overturned for decades, and concerned about that, were dismissed as being hysterical and unduly concerned about something that people couldn't predict was going to happen," added Grafstein.
They were joined at the event by Jill Sergison, a certified nurse-midwife and founder of NC Nurses for Reproductive Rights. Sergison said she wasn't aware of any states having banned any types of contraception yet except morning-after pills. But she said bans aren't the only threat.
"We are already seeing that availability to contraception can be predicated simply on where you live, what your insurance will cover, what your pharmacist will dispense. So there, it's a very slippery slope. And we are seeing some efforts to chip away at some of that access," Sergison said.
