The biggest pro-life bill of this legislative session—HB 695, the Family, Faith, and Freedom Protection Act—has just been scheduled for hearing on Tuesday, July 9th, at 10:00 a.m. in the House Health and Human Services Committee. This bill will protect the unborn and put limits on abortion clinics that are putting women’s health at risk for the sake of making more profit.
Our hope is that the bill will pass the Committee Tuesday morning and be on the House floor Tuesday afternoon for a final vote of concurrence. Your help is critical at this point!
Here’s what we need you to do:
1. Call or email your North Carolina House Member and the Speaker of the House, Representative Thom Tillis. Click HERE to find out who represents you and how to contact them. Click here to find out how to contact Speaker Tillis.2. Come early on Tuesday, July 9th, to make a strong showing of support for HB 695 in the House Health and Human Services Committee, and be prepared to stay for the House session at around 2:00 p.m., should the bill be placed on the calendar. The Committee will meet in Room 544 of the Legislative Office Building, located at 300 N. Salisbury Street in Raleigh. Wear a light blue shirt to show your support.
As voters, we should demand that those who represent us show up to vote on this important pro-life bill, and I hope you will communicate to your House members that not showing up for this vote is a NO vote.
Responding to Gosnell and the Atrocities in Charlotte
The Family, Faith, and Freedom Act is a great advance for pro-life policies and Constitutional rights! Here are the outstanding benefits of HB 695:- Protects citizens from the application of foreign laws that would result in the violation of a fundamental constitutional right. Unbelievably, some courts in the US have actually recently applied Sharia law in family law cases, resulting in harsh treatment of women and children. (HB 695, which passed the House by a vote of 69-42 on May 16)
- Expands current conscience rights to refuse to perform or participate in an abortion to “other healthcare workers.” Pharmacists, nurse assistants, health care facilities, etc. deserve the right to object to performing an abortion, just as doctors and nurses can. Conscience rights are a matter of religious freedom under the First Amendment to the US Constitution and Section 13 of the Statement of Rights in the NC Constitution: “All persons have a natural and inalienable right to worship Almighty God according to the desires of their own consciences, and no human authority shall, in any case whatever control or interfere with the rights of conscience.” (Part of HB 730, which passed the House by a vote of 73-39 on May 16)
- Exercises North Carolina’s right under Obamacare to opt out of covering abortion services through the state exchanges created under Obamacare. Also prohibits Counties and Cities from providing abortion coverage. The majority of Americans don’t want to use tax dollars to pay for abortions, and this provision makes sure we don’t do it through state-funded insurance. (Part of HB 730, which passed the House by a vote of 73-39 on May 16)
- Prohibits doctors from performing sex-selective abortions, and allows injunctive relief and fines against the doctor of $10,000 for the first violation; $50,000 for the second violation; $100,000 for all subsequent violations. Most of the unborn babies who are aborted because of their gender are girls. There is nothing pro-woman about killing a baby girl because she is a female, and putting her mother’s health and safety at risk in the process. This is the REAL war on women. Six separate studies in the past 4 years document the sad reality of baby girls being aborted in our country simply because they are girls. According to the UN, there are over 163 million girls missing around the world, largely because of “gendercide.” (HB 716, which passed the House by a vote of 79-40 on May 7)
- “To ensure the safety of the procedure and prompt medical attention to any complications that may arise,” requires “(t)he physician performing a surgical abortion to be physically present during the performance of the entire abortion procedure” and requires “(t)he physician prescribing, dispensing, or otherwise providing any drug or chemical for the purpose of inducing an abortion to be physically present in the same room as the patient when the drug or chemical is administered to the patient.” Some women have bled to death after a surgical abortion, because the physician who performed the abortion left the abortion clinic. Frequently, chemical abortions are performed by web-cam, with the doctor in a different state observing by web-cam. FDA-approved protocol for RU486 requires the physician to be physically present so he can provide surgical intervention in cases of incomplete abortion or severe bleeding. This is a common-sense provision to guaranty the procedure is safe. (SB 308, which was filed in the Senate on March 13)
- Requires DHHS to have a list of resources posted on its website for women who have had an ultrasound showing that their unborn child may have a disability or serious abnormality so they will not assume that abortion is their only alternative. (SB 308, which was filed in the Senate on March 13)
- Requires DHHS to adopt new rules for abortion clinics, requiring them to meet similar requirements to those for ambulatory surgical centers. The rules must address the on-site recovery phase of patient care at the clinic as well as the requirement for a transfer agreement between a clinic and a hospital. The Gosnell case in Philadelphia brought attention to the horrible practices that exist in many abortion clinics, including unsanitary conditions, absent physicians, and inability to admit abortion patients with complications to a hospital. But, sadly, North Carolina abortion clinics are guilty of many Gosnell-type violations. An abortion clinic in Charlotte has twice been shut down for such atrocities, and Dr. Mitchell Creinin, a California-based obstetrician, said about the clinic’s improper use of a drug used to induce abortion that “It’s no different than hearing about an orthopedic surgeon cutting off the wrong leg.” This provision will ensure that North Carolina does not allow abortion clinics to operate with unsafe, unsanitary conditions that endanger the lives of their patients, like Gosnell and what was happening in Charlotte.
Make no mistake, we do not like it that abortion is still legal and has resulted in the killing of 55 million unborn children in our country. However, since abortion remains legal, we can at least make sure it is safe, it is not used to select the sex of a child, that taxpayer dollars are not used to fund other people’s abortions, that all healthcare workers are free to follow their consciences and refuse to perform abortions, and that abortion clinics abide by common medical practices that guarantee the safety of patients. This is precisely what this bill is about—fighting the atrocities of abortion!
