Bishop Barber on NC General Assembly Overriding Veto on Abortion Ban

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 16, 2023

Contact: Steph Derstine, steph.derstine@berlinrosen.com, 512-820-7903

RALEIGH, N.C. – In response to the decision from extremist lawmakers in the North Carolina Senate to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of a ban on abortions in the state after 12 weeks of pregnancy, Bishop William J. Barber II, president of Repairers of the Breach, issued the following statement:

“When extremist lawmakers in the North Carolina Senate voted to override the Governor’s veto on the abortion ban, they falsely claimed to do so in the name of preserving life. The truth is that there is nothing “pro-life” about denying reproductive rights to women who have been denied access to healthcare for a decade. These lawmakers’ attacks on womens’ rights are undermined by their own inconsistency and hypocrisy. Rather than uplifting North Carolinians, they’re choosing to wage a targeted assault on the lives of poor women across the state.

“If these lawmakers were really concerned about life, they would declare a state of emergency because poverty, the fourth leading cause of death in this nation, is an epidemic in North Carolina. Extremist lawmakers in the General Assembly have done nothing to address the fact that forty-eight percent of people in North Carolina are poor or low-income—a total of 4.7 million residents.

“In the Scripture, God tells us, ‘Today I set before you life and death. Choose life.’ North Carolina’s lawmakers have an opportunity to choose life by raising the state minimum wage, subsidizing child care and family leave, funding public education and addressing gun violence instead of enacting dangerous legislation that puts poor and low-income people’s lives in jeopardy. If they continue to blatantly disregard our calls for life-saving legislation, we’ll find them at the ballot box and move them out of the way.”