January is Declared Choose Life License Plate Month

Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship
Press Release Contact: Bobbie Meyer, State Director
January 5, 2011 Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship
Contact info: 704.281.8631
For Immediate Release

January is declared Choose Life License Plate Month.

The Carolina Care Pregnancy Care Fellowship (CPCF) announces that January as been designated as Choose Life License Plate Month. The Choose Life license plate is a specialty license plate approved in 26 states that has raised over $13.6 million dollars to help pregnancy care centers, maternity homes and adoption agencies. In advance of the opening of the new session of the General Assembly, CPCF along with its coalition members have given January special designation to highlight their determination to keep pressing for the plate. For eight years, the legislation for the choose life place has been denied a vote even though more than 130 other specialty plates have been approved. The Pro-Life community is hopeful that the new legislature will be more responsive to their request for the plate.

The 2009 session of the General Assembly saw the number of sponsors rise from 12 representatives in the House to 38. According to Bobbie Meyer, State Director of the CPCF, “This year we hope to receive approval from committee chairs and reach the threshold of a supermajority in each chamber, 30 Senators and 72 Representatives. Our coalition members will be at the General Assembly for the filing of the bill to convince legislators that we have a need for this bill.”

Funds from these plates would be dedicated to pregnancy care centers in North Carolina who are working tirelessly to offer expectant mothers the support and resources they need. There are currently 80 pregnancy care centers that served over 30,000 women in North Carolina last year alone. North Carolina’s pregnancy care centers offer information, emotional support and practical help to thousands of women who face the challenges of unexpected pregnancies. The centers offer a variety of free services from pregnancy tests to parenting classes, baby supplies, to ultrasounds and STD testing by medical personnel. Each plate sold will provide $15 toward assisting these centers to offer services, all at no cost to taxpayers.

With the change in the legislature, CPCF is hopeful that the General Assembly of North Carolina will now give us the right to purchase a voluntary specialty license plate that will benefit our families. North Carolina is the only state in the Southeast that prohibits the sale of the Choose Life plate. CPCF believes our new North Carolina Choose Life license plate will be a positive addition to our wonderful state and contribute to the well-being of the youngest generation of citizens. See also www.ncchoose-life.org.

This new determined effort is being supported and planned by Rep. Mitch Gillespie, sponsor of the Choose Life plate legislation; the Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship; NC Right to Life; the Roman Catholic Dioceses of Charlotte and Raleigh; Russ Amerling, National Director of Choose Life license plates; The North Carolina Family Policy Council; Civitas NC; The Christian Action League; and NC Pro-Life Democrats.

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.)

Choose Life License Plate a Non-issue for this Year

Sad news from Barb Stevens, director of the Carolinas Pregnancy Care Fellowship. Rep. Mitch Gillespie has reported that the chairman of the Finance Committee has informed him that the Choose Life bill will not be heard this session. He will reintroduce it next year.