RALEIGH, N.C. – While other states in the U.S have minimized women’s freedom to reproductive rights, Attorney General Josh Stein and Congresswoman Deborah Ross shared updates regarding their efforts to protect these rights in North Carolina. They teamed up with N.C. House Representative Rosa Gill and Dr. Erica Pettigrew, MD, JD, MPH, Pettigrew is a family medicine doctor and public health professional.
General Josh Stein stated they will do everything in their power to continue to safeguard the right to abortion in North Carolina. “I’m grateful to Rep. Ross and Rep. Gill for fighting for North Carolina’s women in the General Assembly and in Congress and for doctors like Dr. Pettigrew who are providing women the medical care that is their right.”
‘“North Carolina currently stands as a safe haven in the South, but we need to fight to keep it that way,” said Congresswoman Ross.
“I am incredibly grateful for the leadership of Attorney General Stein, State Representative Rosa Gill, and courageous health care providers like Dr. Pettigrew, who are fighting to protect reproductive freedom in our state. It will take all of us at the federal, state, and local level to safeguard women’s access to abortion in the face of these despicable attacks on our health care.”
Attorney General Stein has worked hard to protect women’s reproductive freedom since the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Congresswoman Ross has continued to support several federal legislations that have passed the U.S. House of Representatives that would affirm the right to an abortion, the right to contraception, and the right to travel across state line access to abortion care.
“In North Carolina, abortion is still legal but legislative Republicans have already said their top priority is to make it illegal,” said Rep. Rosa Gill. “Legislative Democrats have introduced legislation to simply codify the rights women had under Roe – rights that women have had for half a century.”
“North Carolina is dangerously close to being one of the forced birth states, and that has hugely negative consequences far beyond abortion,” said Dr. Erica Pettigrew, MD, JD, MPH, a family medicine doctor and public health professional.