Why not NC too?

Raleigh News and Observer
Point of View:
Published: Jun 25, 2008 12:30 AM
Modified: Jun 25, 2008 02:23 AM
Why not N.C. too?
Barbara Holt and Eva L. Ritchey

Her flushed face revealed her anxious thoughts. Her hands were folded tightly on the table. She spoke of the moment that changed her life 27 years ago in a community far from her home.
In college, a passionate evening had resulted in an unplanned pregnancy. Rather than end the pregnancy, her parents found a place for her with a loving family referred to them by a pregnancy care center in Alabama. Now, as she had always anticipated, that child, now a young woman, was eager to meet her birth mother. In two weeks, the mother and her husband would be boarding a flight to meet the daughter she courageously entrusted to others.

Thousands of times in pregnancy care centers, similar events take place. Women of varied backgrounds, often under pressure from others to abort their children, come to these centers to find support and material aid. Meeting the needs of women who come to these centers is often a financial challenge for the more than 70 support centers in North Carolina.

Now we have the opportunity to provide additional funds to these worthwhile islands of mercy.
State Rep. Mitch Gillespie has introduced HB 932 to authorize a "Choose Life" license plate for North Carolina. Fifteen dollars from the sale of each plate would directly benefit North Carolina centers without any cost to the taxpayer, because specialized plates include a $10 fee to cover all state costs. Since 1999 when the first "Choose Life" license plate was approved in Florida, 18 other states have followed. More than $8.7 million has been raised from the over 400,000 plates sold or renewed.

In the Southeast, North Carolina is the only state left that will not allow the "Choose Life" license plate.

We are grateful to House Transportation Committee Chair Becky Carney for her efforts in getting HB 932 out of the committee. We hope that the Finance Committee will give the bill a favorable report so the bill has a chance to become law. After all, North Carolina has approved over 130 license plates that promote everything from Save the Sea Turtles to NASCAR drivers to shag dancing.

Some object that "Choose Life" is an "issue" plate and as such should not be allowed. What about the "Sons of Confederate Veterans" plate, which includes a stars and bars insignia. That clearly evokes emotions on both sides?

A few legislators are concerned that a "Choose Life" plate would create a forum exclusively for the "anti-abortion" viewpoint. While courts have differed on whether the state can allow one message and not an opposing message, proponents of the North Carolina plate are simply asking for the right to display the "Choose Life" message.

In Women's Emergency Network v. Bush, a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the plaintiffs did not have standing to challenge a "Choose Life" statute based on the First Amendment. "The First Amendment protects the right to speak; it does not give Appellants the right to stop others with opposing viewpoints from speaking," the court wrote.
And though our state courts have stated in Rosie J. v. N.C. DHS that there is a "legitimate governmental objective of encouraging childbirth," North Carolina continues to prevent individuals from expressing that viewpoint.

Planned Parenthood has characterized pregnancy care centers as providing "... misinformation, intimidation, coercion, or harassment to women seeking reproductive health care." That is not how Mimi Every, executive director for 16 years of Pregnancy Support Services in Durham and Chapel Hill (trianglepregnancysupport.com) would characterize her work.

She says "Center staff and volunteers are well trained and motivated to help, not to promote an agenda, but to extend kindness to hurting women ... Because there are no fees for services, pregnancy centers do not stand to gain or lose anything depending on choices women make about their unplanned pregnancies."

Why would Planned Parenthood protest our Choose Life plate when it could use the same procedure for getting its own plate?

Non-profit, volunteer-driven pregnancy care centers provide services to the whole woman and to needy families, sometimes well after birth, or abortion. (Yes, pregnancy care centers even offer tender and compassionate assistance to those who need care after an abortion.)

Thousands of North Carolina citizens are only asking for what many other citizens already have, a special registration plate. Our state already allows "Save the Sea Turtles." Shouldn't the state allow citizens to purchase a plate that says "Choose Life"?

(Barbara Holt is president of North Carolina Right to Life Inc. Eva L. Ritchey, is president of N.C. Pro-Life Democrats.)