Abortion bill unacceptable

And we thought the “Motorcycle Vagina” bill of 2013 was bad. Late in the day on April 1, the oppressive folks at the NC General Assembly filed House Bill 465, “Clarify and Modify Certain Abortion Laws” (“N.C. Reps. File New Abortion Bill,” April 2, 2015) which is even more terrifying because of the generations-long implications it has.

This bill would 1) Triple the waiting period for women, female, and trans folks who want an abortion; 2) Ban abortions from being performed at UNC and ECU hospitals, which would decimate women, female, and trans folks’ access to comprehensive reproductive health care on huge regional level; and 3) Essentially eliminates future generations of abortion providers by barring the medical teaching of pregnancy termination at UNC and ECU hospitals. These are teaching hospitals, and this bill makes it so future doctors, nurses and family medicine practitioners don’t know how to perform one of the safest surgical procedures. Thereby, it would create waves of medical personnel who are unequipped in the full range of their profession.

This is unacceptable. North Carolinians did not ask for this legislation. More importantly, women, female and trans folks’ bodies are not political battlegrounds and no one, apart from ourselves and our doctors, should be trying to make any decisions about our bodies.

Instead of pretending to be doctors, our legislators should to stick to being legislators and file bills that will actually improve North Carolina by creating jobs, protecting public education, and expanding healthcare coverage for North Carolinians!

Lynne Walter, Raleigh

Support the solar bill

I support House Bill 245 totally (“Change the Game,” March 25). I am the former associate director of the N.C. State Animal and Poultry Waste Management Center, where we investigated a number of viable renewable-energy recovery systems from animal waste.

I was also a member of the NC Green Power Commission, until I retired in 2009. There, I developed a very strong interest and advocacy for solar energy as well as other renewable energy forms. This bill provides a way to enhance solar applications in a way that will make them even more economically viable.

Leonard S. Bull, Raleigh