Pro-Choice North Carolina joined over 70 North Carolina organizations and faith groups to speak out this week against North Carolina General Assembly Republican’s latest gerrymandering. This round of gerrymandering dismantled Congressional District 1 in the historic Black Belt region of northeastern NC, severely undermining the voting power of residents there.
This relentless effort to unnecessarily and discriminately redraw Congressional maps is one more part of a years-long practice that has already resulted in our Congressional and statehouse maps being among the most rigged and unrepresentative in the country.
Even before the U.S. Supreme Court dismantled the federal protections for abortion access in its 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, the result of another long-term conservative plan, the majority of North Carolinians were clear in their support for access to abortion care, free from political interference. That popular opinion, however, is not represented in our gerrymandered legislature, leaving North Carolina residents with few options for accessing timely and necessary abortion care in their communities. With a closely divided U.S. House of Representatives crafting policies to potentially further restrict reproductive health care, the NCGA’s latest gerrymandering will push an extreme political agenda in Congress and will silence the voices and will of voters.
At a time when North Carolinians have been making their voices heard in the 2024 election for state offices, their robust advocacy at the NC General Assembly, and mass mobilizations around the state, it’s clear that voters are tired of politics-as-usual and demand policies that center the needs of our communities, not an extremist political agenda. It is also clear Republicans in our state legislature would rather push the dangerous and unpopular priorities of the federal administration to retain their own personal power, rather than address the needs of North Carolinians.
There is more than enough legislative work for our state lawmakers to focus on: Our state budget is overdue by more than 110 days, leaving public schools and state agencies and departments underfunded; between federal attacks on healthcare and the state legislature leadership’s indifference, people on Medicaid and other health plans will see premiums rise and services decline; western North Carolina still needs more resources in order to make a full recovery from Hurricane Helene’s devastating impacts. But in lieu of addressing these pressing needs, Republicans in our state legislature came back into session to needlessly draw even more gerrymandered maps because the President demanded they do so.
In a joint letter we sent to NCGA leaders, we asked lawmakers not to introduce new Congressional maps “that would further distort North Carolina’s federal voting maps and erode any North Carolinians’ power to elect candidates of their choice,” but our voices were ignored by the politicians in power. We believe, like the vast majority of North Carolinians, that voters choose their elected officials, not the other way around. Unfortunately, Republicans at the NC General Assembly do not, and these new gerrymandered maps is yet another strike against a robust and representative democracy.
