With the greatest possible respect, please tell me how a reasonably intelligent human being could possibly come to the conclusion that you’re *NOT* a hypocrite when we look at these two statements (one where you were reading a clumsily prepared written excuse after the veto override vote that could have been ghost-written by Speaker Moore and the one you told the voters in the district you were hoping to represent):
“Some call me a hypocrite since I voted for this bill. They presume to know my story. As I said at the time, I had an ectopic pregnancy that sadly ended in miscarriage, not an elective abortion. In fact, Senate Bill 20 affirms the life-saving care I received in that dire situation. It was very important to me that this legislation protects all women going through a miscarriage or other complications — and it most certainly does.”
Rep Tricia Cotham (NC House 112 – Mecklenburg) — 17 May 2023
“Now, more than ever we need leaders who will be unwavering and unapologetic in their support of abortion rights. I’ll fight to codify Roe in the #ncga and continue my strong record of defending the right to choose.” #ncpol #WomensRights #SCOTUS #Mecklenburg
Candidate Tricia Cotham — 03 May 2022
Whilst you’re trying to go through the mental gymnastics to rationalise your way out of that particular example of your hypocrisy, let us consider that was not even the most stupid thing you said in the prepared statement.
That “honour” belongs to this dog whistle of “some of the absolutists believe aborting a perfectly healthy child in the 40th week of pregnancy is morally acceptable” which has *NEVER* been a thing even before Roe v Wade set out a framework of allowing abortion up to the point of viability which was then refined to a more workable standard in the Planned Parenthood v Casey decision.
But your hypocrisy started well before your veto override vote today.
It started when you declared your candidacy for the 112th district in Mecklenburg County which is an Democrat-majority district and running on a platform of that included maintaining abortion access for women no worse than the 20-week law that was resurrected when Roe v Wade was binned and actually codifying Roe and Planned Parenthood into law.
I’m sure you’d argue that being a listed sponsor on HB19 is enough to fulfill that promise even though you knew full well it didn’t stand a chance in the infernal regions of surviving the 2023 crossover deadline and to the shock of absolutely no one didn’t which means it’s effectively dead for this legislative session.
Quelle surprise.
I’m sure that the 59.22% of the voters who cast ballots during the 2022 general election for someone who accepted campaign support and funding from the Democratic Party and like-minded political action committees probably have far worse names they’re thinking of when they think of your switching of party affiliation and your betraying of their expressed wishes from their representative’s vote today.
If anything, hypocrite seems to be much nicer than traitor which was featured on more than a few signs of the protestors in the gallery and outside the General Assembly.
But no matter how much you might wish to duck the questions from the public and blow off the reporters asking those uncomfortable questions, the plain fact of the matter is that you cannot avoid this simple truth:
*YOU* and *YOUR ACTIONS* are ultimately the *ONLY REASON* this ban became law.
You can try to rationalise away the responsibility all you want and to be sure there is plenty of blame to be shared round.
There’s Justice Alito and the other justices who concurred with the Dobbs decision that destroyed Roe v Wade that unlocked the door for these ever increasingly draconian bans to come into force.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Rucho v Common Cause recognised but chose to do nothing about the fact that more than a few legislatures (and especially our own!) were choosing the voters they wished to face with hyper-partisan districts gerrymandered with near surgical precision meant to artificially inflate the anti-democratic super-majority you’re now a willing participant in so that it does not even come close to representing where North Carolina voters are politically.
“I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats, because I
Rep David R Lewis, co-chairman of the General Assembly redistricting committee
do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.”
I imagine Representative Lewis couldn’t be happier with totally getting away with rigging the electoral maps to effectively disfranchise a solid majority of the voters. And yes, I know the Democrats did the same thing for a hundred or so years prior to the Republicans hijacking Jones Street for their purposes and it was no more right then than it is now.
Two wrongs certainly didn’t make a right in this case, though I imagine that knowing right from wrong is a rather tough exercise for a politician to truly understand when they’ve got thousands or millions of reasons in their bank accounts to ignore anything that approaches having an actual conscience or principles.
But when you switched your affiliation and then willingly signed on to the radical agenda that the Supreme Court taking a pass on protecting women’s bodily autonomy and actually doing something about the hyper-partisan gerrymanders in this state, you were the one who actually turned the handle of the door and allowed this new law to come into force.
Every woman who has to carry a pregnancy to term regardless of her desire to control what happens to her body will have you to thank for having been shackled to the partisan whims of the super-majority.
Every woman who can’t find a way to jump through the excessive and medically unnecessary hoops that *YOU DID NOT* will have you to thank for it.
Every woman who now feels like a second-class citizen in her own state has you to blame for it.
And all of this came about because you thought the Democrats were a bunch of control freaks who caused you to take your fragile ego to the other side of the aisle because they were mean to you and didn’t pay enough attention to your wishes?
Just wait until you find out what trying to have an independent mind is like in a party that is utterly beholden to former President Trump and his gang of political zealots and insurrectionists. Why don’t you ask Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger what their reward was for actually standing up for the American people after January 6th?
Your mind is going to be allowed to be as independent as your new political master Speaker Moore will allow it to be. And once you cease to be convenient or of use, you’ll be cast aside as surplus to his requirements because he can’t afford to trust someone who betrayed her stated principles any more than we the people can! That’s the price of trying to play both sides against the middle for political gain…you will never be fully trusted in a political setting ever again.
You’ll have plenty of people who will wish to use you for their purposes but actually being trusted? You’ve got a better chance of telling the sun to orbit round the Earth than ever finding someone willing to trust anything you have to say at face value.
And make no mistake…for all of your protestations that you “insisted” in “reasonable compromises” in SB20 or you wouldn’t support it to get the ban down to only 12 weeks rather than the 6 weeks or lower that Speaker Moore is on record as preferring, if you truly believed that was where they planned on stopping now that *YOU* allowed the elephant into the patient’s examination room, then you are truly more hopelessly naive than I would have imagined possible in a supposedly intelligent representative of the people.
“This represents the legislation that I believe this General Assembly can pass. I can’t say what’ll happen two years, four years, 10 years from now.”
NC House Speaker Tim Moore
“I think we ended up in a good place for where we are right now.”
NC Senate Pro-Tem Phil Berger
The ink had barely dried on the veto override stamp that Speaker Moore slammed down onto the front page of SB20 before those two were already planning for their next assault upon women’s rights.
Never mind that roughly 60% of North Carolinians would have preferred that the General Assembly left the existing 20-week ban in place or codified Roe before this override vote and are likely very unhappy with SB20 being passed, much less being enacted into law with the governor’s objection notwithstanding.
Now that the NC Supreme Court is packed with accomplices who are so happy with allowing the General Assembly to pick their voters that they actually reversed their own precedent that gerrymandering was illegal, we’re all but certain to have electoral maps that are even less representative of North Carolina’s political views than the current ones which are already bad enough.
You allowed this to happen.
Like it as not, whenever the subject of abortion restrictions comes up in this state…your name is going to be front and centre and forever attached to actions and votes that betrayed the people you were supposed to represent.
Frankly, you betrayed the rights and aspirations of your gender for some sort of corrupt bargain of a reward from people who can’t be trusted that we have no idea what it is but for that price beggars belief that it could possibly be worth the damage you’ve done to the people of your constituency that you are supposed to represent and the people of our state.
You’ve sold your name and the nobility and sense of honesty, fair dealing, tolerance and willingness to support and care for our neighbours in the community in need that North Carolinians were known and admired for through this nation’s history for shady political deals to gain political power and turn that nobility and sense of purpose into creatures that the right-wing extremists and fear-mongers think we ought to be.
HB2 and the continuing attacks on people who genuinely want to be left to live their life in peace was bad enough.
Your actions and those of your “colleagues” in this vote today subjugating women to the political whims of the extremists in the General Assembly to the delight of those who have bought and paid for your help in trying to turn our great state into a radical theocracy the Taliban would admire truly make me ashamed to be from the state I love and care for deeply but I’m having a much harder time recognising.
The more I think on it, you might just want to accept the title of hypocrite and be done with it.
The reality of your actions in betraying the ideals of North Carolina is deserving of much harsher censure.
And you and your new-found besties might just want to consider yourself lucky that broken campaign promises and other political lies have rarely landed candidates in the prisoner’s dock answering to charges of fraud and theft by false pretenses!