Wake's lone Republican House member calls out Dem colleague on abortion hypocrisy
Republican Rep. Erin Paré called out Democrat Julie von Haefen over tweeted photo
Wake County’s lone Republican House member Rep. Erin Paré called out the hypocrisy of Wake County Democrat Julie von Haefen after von Haefen tweeted about her work “fighting” for persons with Down’s Syndrome.
In a thread on Twitter, von Haefaen complained about the “tough week” she had at the General Assembly.
“It’s been a really tough couple of days for me at the NCGA,” von Haefen tweeted. “With the passage of sports gambling & the veto override of a horrible gun bill, and now today- an abortion ban bill and a Republican budget full of bad policy and millions for crisis pregnancy centers, it’s been hard.”
The Wake Democrat followed that tweet up by posting a photo of her with two young men with Downs Syndrome, claiming these are the people she is “fighting for.”
Paré responded, calling out how von Haefen had voted against a bill that would have prohibited selective abortion of babies with Downs Syndrome.
The bill referred to by Paré is House Bill 453, titled “Human Life Nondiscrimination Act/No Eugenics.”
The bill would have prohibited an individual from performing an abortion unless a physician/doctor had confirmed the abortion wasn’t being sought due to the actual or presumed race or sex of the unborn child or the presence or presumed presence of Down syndrome.
Additionally, a doctor would have been required to report whether the race or sex of the unborn child or the presence of Down syndrome had been detected and to affirm the accuracy of the report.
The House vote passing the bill was 67-42. Six Democrats voted yes with their Republican counterparts, but von Haefen wasn’t one of them. She voted “no.”
House Bill 453 was passed by both chambers and sent to Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, who vetoed it on the final day before it would have become law without his signature.
The “no” vote and veto of the 2021 pro-life bill wasn’t the only instance.
In 2019, von Haefen took to Twitter to champion a blocked veto override attempt on a bill that would have required doctors to give life-saving treatment to a baby born alive during an abortion attempt.
Update: von Haefen doubled down:
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Von Haefen is well-known for her hard pro-abortion stance and as of 2022, pro-abortion groups have donated over $27,000 to her political campaigns.
During the current session of the legislatures, von Haefen is the primary sponsor of House Bill 439, which bears the title the “RBG Act,” after the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
The “RBG Act” seeks to codify abortion access in North Carolina and it removes the 20-week time limit to obtain an abortion to allow abortion at any time before a pregnancy is “viable,” but the bill doesn’t define that term.
The bill also removes all annual inspections of abortion facilities and includes a section to “Codify Roe v. Wade.”
Filed on Mar. 22, the bill was quickly sent off the next day to the Rules and Operations Committee of the House where it is unlikely to emerge. It’s worth noting House Bill 439 is identical to one with the same name filed in the Senate on the same day by Sen. Natasha Marcus (D-Mecklenburg).
Planned Parenthood of South Atlantic has stated it is in “full support” of the bill.
In the first week of the current short session, several other bills were filed under the name “Codify Roe and Casey Protections.”
It would also seem that von Haefen has a problem with organizations that offer alternatives to abortion, such as crisis pregnancy centers.
In 2021, von Haefen penned an op-ed at the News & Observer highlighting $9 million in the proposed House budget for what she characterized as “three anti-abortion franchises,” and “fake clinics.”
Sen. Joyce Kraweic (R-Forsyth) didn’t let von Haefen’s premise stand.
Over her career in the House, von Haefen has positioned herself as a champion of women’s reproductive health, yet in her op-ed, she went on to claim crisis pregnancy centers (emphasis added) “pose as health care providers for pregnant people.”
And what people are those, the reader is left to wonder. Or are we talking about people at all?
In a 2019 story about the tweet exchange between von Haefen and Kraweic by NC Healthcare News, von Haefen was more worried about the cost of “pregnant people.”
“These unintended pregnancies result in billions of dollars in healthcare expenditures,” von Hafen told NC Healthcare News. “By averting unintended pregnancies, we can actually save money and health care. If we really want to look at healthcare spending, the better way to do it is to prevent the pregnancy on the front end rather than dealing with it on the other side.”