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Republican Bo Hines is being slammed for suggesting victims of rape and incest to go through “a community-level review process outside the jurisdiction of the federal government” to determine if they can get an abortion.
Bo Hines’s proposal to make women and girls who have already experienced horrific trauma beg for their right to get an abortion from a panel of complete strangers is nothing short of cruel. Here’s what North Carolinians are watching and reading about it:
MSNBC: The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
New York Times: How Republicans Watered Down Their Abortion Message
By Blake Hounshell
November 2, 2022
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Some of these pivots have been clumsy. Bo Hines, a former college quarterback who is running for a House seat in North Carolina, backs creating a panel that would decide whether to allow abortions in case of rape or incest. But he’s been vague about how it might work.
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“There are certainly legal mechanisms you could place legislatively that would create an individual basis,” Hines told Spectrum News. Democrats blasted out a news release calling the idea “post-Dobbs rape panels.”
Raleigh News & Observer: Opinion: Republicans have a new answer to the abortion question, and it’s worse than a total ban
By Editorial Board Member Sara Pequeño
November 3, 2022
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At best, Hines and the rest of the GOP are trying to spin their strict anti-abortion beliefs as something more moderate, even if something like a community review process would criminalize those seeking abortion, even for people deemed “more worthy” of the procedure.
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At worst, putting a rape survivor on stage in front of peers who will pick apart their “believability” sounds like a 21st century witch trial or an anecdote from the town in “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson.
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That is what Hines apparently wants victims of sexual violence to endure. This is what Oz is suggesting with his quip that local politicians should be included in the abortion conversation. Even if a community review is private, the narrative is out of the victims’ hands. They will be judged for something they had no say in happening, and every bit of their lives could be used in the decision. If you have multiple partners, or struggle to remember your story, that’s just another point against you.
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“As an OBGYN, it’s hard to comprehend how Bo Hines could think that a community-level review process is an acceptable way to determine whether or not victims of rape are allowed to access healthcare,” Dr. Alan Rosenbaum, said in a joint press release with Hines’s Democratic opponent, Wiley Nickel.
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Surely, Hines knows that it isn’t acceptable. If he doesn’t, we should be concerned about more than just his opinions on reproductive rights.
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