Having a say in where their child attends school is a foreign concept to countless parents across North Carolina. Due to financial and regional limitations, many families have only one educational option—a public school system that at times fails to meet the needs of each individual student.

While the harmful social atmosphere, reduced academic standards, and plummeting graduation rates in some public schools may worry parents, many do not have the tools or resources to choose another option. But a new statewide organization is working to change that unfortunate fact. Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina (PEFNC), a non-profit group incorporated in July 2005, is bridging political and racial lines to advocate policies that aim to bring the benefits of school choice to every family across the state.

In its first major event held on March 6 at the Upper Room Christian Academy in Raleigh, PEFNC drew a diverse crowd of parents, children, educators, and legislators from nearly 20 counties across the state. The event served as a rallying point for citizens who are supportive of broader school choice and frustrated with the public education system. According to Darrell Allison, president of PEFNC, staff members only expected 300 to attend the school choice event, but the final headcount was over 1,000, causing standing-room-only conditions.

“We were blown away,” Allison said. “Thousands have responded to the message. That message is freedom. Freedom for our students, freedom to give them all the tools necessary to succeed in society, and freedom for parents to choose the education that best fits the needs of their children.”

Howard Fuller Keynote

Dr. Howard Fuller, chair and founder of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, delivered the event’s keynote address. In his speech, Fuller addressed failures in the public school system, particularly for minority students. “An education is about preparing people to be socially and economically productive,” he said. “An education is about giving you the capacity to engage in the practice of freedom. Unfortunately, too many of our poorest children, a disproportionate number of which are children of color, will never realize the blessings of education because our system fails them. Too many of them will not be able to participate in the mainstream of society.”

Fuller also stressed that the wealthy already have choice in education, a choice that poorer families cannot afford. “If you’ve got money and the school isn’t working for your kid, you’re going to move…or put them in a private school,” Fuller said. “The only people who are trapped are those who are poor, who can’t move. Think about the hypocrisy in America. You’ve got teachers teaching in schools where they would never put their own children.”

Fuller tapped into a concern shared by many families—how to avoid having students languish in a failing public school. In fact, a widening achievement gap, mixed with lackluster graduation rates, were factors that prompted the creation of PEFNC in the first place, according to Allison. “I consider this the 21st century civil rights issue, for our working poor and for our working middle class,” he said, adding that his goal is to bring educational options to all North Carolinians, regardless of race or place of residence.

Allison not only views the struggle for school choice as a social justice issue, but one of religious faith as well. Describing himself as “very strong” in his Christian faith, Allison has previously worked in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. He also worked for an organization that supported faith-based initiatives. Directing PEFNC is just an extension of the path that God has directed him down, Allison said.

“I think that we’ve really tapped into something here as it relates to parents having greater freedom to choose an education that best fits the needs of their children,” Allison said. “And when you look at our one-system model, it’s just not doing very well for what I believe is a growing minority base of folks—not just race…There are just real issues there, and people are doing their best to vocalize their concerns, their frustrations. There’s a real hunger for change.”

School Failure

Allison is disturbed by the track record of the public schools on graduation rates, specifically in minority communities. “You can’t argue with the facts, and the facts are that only 68 percent of our children graduate on time in the state of North Carolina,” Allison said.

According to the results of a study recently presented to the N.C. Board of Education, just 60 percent of black high school students who began ninth grade in the 2002-03 school year ended up graduating in four years or less. The numbers are even more alarming for Hispanic students – only 51.8 percent of first-time ninth graders graduated on time. The graduation rates were substantially higher for white (73.6 percent) and Asian (74.1 percent) students.

“This confirms what we’ve been hearing from families and community members,” Allison said in reference to the study. “There has always been some unease with our public education system not meeting the needs of all of our children, but when this recent report came out, it just reconfirmed that.”

Other research indicates that minority students often face major hurdles in the public education system. A report published by the Education Trust found that schools predominantly composed of minority students were twice as likely to have novice teachers on the faculty compared to schools without many minorities. The same study found that about 70 percent of math teachers in high-poverty and high-minority middle schools do not have a college minor in math or a field of study related to math.

Lindalyn Kakadelis, director of the North Carolina Education Alliance, an organization dedicated to reforming the state’s education system, said that one of the reasons public schools are failing is because they cannot meet the individual needs of each student. “I think that one of the fallacies that government schools have to work with is this whole idea of assignment,” Kakadelis said. “You live here, you’re assigned there, and that’s just the way it is. That’s the quickest way to make a parent feel hopeless and helpless and not empowered at all in their child’s education.”

Kakadelis added that another cause for frustration with public education is the sheer size of the system. Schools try “to be all things to all people at all locations,” Kakadelis said, but end up failing to meet the needs of students on an individual level.

Witnessing shortcomings in the educational system was what prompted Raleigh businessman John Bryson to become a PEFNC board member. Bryson said that he was initially attracted to the organization from an economic standpoint, seeing the impact that poor education has on the world of business. But as he became more involved with PEFNC, he began to see the issue of school choice from a variety of angles. Bryson was able to send his four children to private schools, but he emphasized the fact that some parents, particularly in minority communities, don’t have that option.

“The more I got involved with the movement, I saw some of these statistics and it just made me realize the importance of being able to choose,” Bryson said. “From my standpoint, I feel like I paid twice for my kid’s education – in taxes, plus also having to come up with the tuition to send them to school. Whether that’s fair or not, I made that choice. Some people don’t have that option…so they’re stuck with the system, which may work for them and may not.”

School Choice

PEFNC supports a broad array of programs that provide parents and families with greater educational options. Allison points to a tax credit bill currently being considered in the General Assembly as a good example of the bi-partisan nature of the push for school choice. The legislation, H.B. 388, would provide a tax credit for disabled students to attend a special needs school.

“It’s a very unique approach, and a laudable approach as well, in that you have Republicans and Democrats working together and trying their best to meet a need among North Carolina citizens and those families that have children with certain disabilities,” Allison said.

Kakadelis said that she has witnessed increased interest in school choice among minority communities across the country. “Usually, when the African American Democrat policymakers join with Republicans who do not receive money from the education establishment, school choice is a done deal,” she said. Kakadelis added that the state legislature could make school choice easier for minorities by raising the cap on charter schools, offering a tax credit so that families will not have to pay twice for their child’s education, and allowing individuals and corporations to receive “dollar for dollar off their state taxes” when giving to scholarship granting organizations.

Increasing interest in school choice has also translated into more minority parents choosing to educate their children at home. According to Dr. Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute, 85,000 to 105,000 homeschool students in 2002-03 were African American. Joyce Burges, an African American woman who, along with her husband, founded the National Black Home Educators in 2000, said that she has seen a 10 to 15 percent increase in the number of homeschool black families over the last seven years.

Burges said that home education is beneficial because it is flexible, builds strong family relationships, gives children an opportunity to own their education, and allows parents to tailor the curriculum to meet the needs of each individual child. “The public schools have failed our black families, and that’s the main reason why they are choosing to homeschool,” she said. “A lot of younger African American families…don’t even want to go through the headache [of the public schools].”

Burges added that many of the objections that parents raise against homeschooling—such as financial and career limitations—are not substantial reasons to reject home education. “There are so many of us who are homeschooling who are actually doing it—single fathers are homeschooling, and single moms who have entrepreneurship jobs, or they have their own cottage industries and are able to bring their children along as part of their work,” she said.

Future Plans

The school choice movement in North Carolina is still in the infant stage, according to Kakadelis. Many North Carolinians view public education as a sacred institution, she said, and are therefore automatically opposed to school choice if they believe that it will harm public schools. Still, Kakadelis said that the idea of school choice is beginning to take root. “In the marketplace of ideas, school choice wins,” she said. “It’s just getting someone there who can debate it, can discuss it, that understands it, that has the facts and not the myths. The education establishment is great at coming up with myths.”

For the future, Allison said that he wants to continue meeting with small groups throughout the state and building on what PEFNC did on March 6. “We’re planning a two-focused approach: Continue to build the grass roots, continue to get the message out to the every day man, as well as to ratchet up and carry that message to our elected officials,” Allison said.

David Bass is a research assistant with the North Carolina Family Policy Council.

RALEIGH — At first glance, UNC-Chapel Hill sophomore Charissa Lloyd might seem like a typical college student. Her schedule is crammed with campus activities — everything from participating in Intervarsity Christian Fellowship to serving on the staff of Rival Magazine. She enjoys academics, too, and hopes to one day become a social worker involved in pro-life causes.

But at least one aspect makes Lloyd unique from most of her classmates: By the time she graduated from high school in 2005, she had already accumulated 60 credit hours and a 4.0 GPA from a local community college. What gave her the flexibility to pursue college-level courses while still in school? Another attribute differentiates her from most other students: She was homeschooled from kindergarten through the 12th grade.

With the increasing number of parents pulling their children out of traditional public schools in favor of home education, Lloyd’s success story is quickly becoming commonplace. Each year, colleges and universities across the nation enroll an increasing number of home-school graduates. According to research conducted by Dr. Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute, 75 percent of all homeschool graduates have at least some college experience, compared to about 50 percent in the general population.

That trend is indicative of the higher academic and moral values that homeschool students leave home with, according to Christopher Klicka, senior counsel for the Homeschool Legal Defense Association.

“Homeschoolers are head and shoulders above the norm because they have mastered the tools of learning,” Klicka said. “They tend to really understand how to write and read and do math. You throw in self-discipline and good character, and you can apply yourself to just about any subject that there is at the college level, even if you didn’t have access to the fancy laboratories and the other equipment that they have in the public schools.”

A major concern among home-school families in the early 1980s was that colleges would refuse to admit home-educated graduates later in life, but today that fear has been “tremendously diminished,” Klicka said, because universities no longer block homeschool graduates.

“They are all receiving home-schoolers with open arms,” he said.

Many parents and home education experts agree that homeschool graduates are not only surviving but thriving in higher education. Spencer and Debbie Mason of Charlotte have two homeschool graduates in the university system. One child graduated with a four-year degree from Grove City College in Pennsylvania and now attends Regent University School of Law; the other is enrolled as a junior at North Carolina State University and plans to begin work on his master’s degree next year.

Spencer Mason said that it’s no longer necessary to be concerned about homeschool graduates being turned down by colleges. “There are some colleges that actually have admissions counselors that specialize in homeschoolers,” Mason said. “You’ll find a lot of the Ivy League and tier-one colleges are very open to homeschoolers coming.”

Hal Young, education vice president for North Carolinians for Home Education, said that some Ivy League schools are actually admitting homeschool graduates at a higher percentage than students in the general population. “A lot of colleges are saying that [homeschoolers] are a good population to pursue,” he said. “They’ve had positive results dealing with home-educated students, and so they actively go out and look for them.”

More college Web sites are employing separate pages specifically designed for home-school applicants, and some private colleges in the state are actively recruiting, Young said.

Klicka, who has advocated for the legal rights of home-school families for 21 years, said representatives from colleges are appearing at home-school conventions to recruit. Given home education’s academic track record, universities view homeschool graduates as a “good risk,” Klicka said.

One of the most common objections levied against home education is that homeschool students lack exposure to different social settings, but Young said that graduates integrate well into the campus environment. “Homeschooling is individual, but it’s not isolated,” he said. “Most homeschoolers that we hear from are pretty well networked in support groups, church activities, Scouting programs, and sports programs…so when they get to the college campuses where there are other groups around, that’s just another day in life.”

Charissa’s mother, Teresa Lloyd, said that her daughter is actually “over-involved” in campus activities. “When I was in college, I was ready to get out of the dorms, but [Charissa] has enjoyed that,” Lloyd said. “She really sees it as an opportunity to make a positive difference in people’s lives there, and it’s such a big campus that she has been able to find some like-minded individuals and people who share her interests.”

Academically, several universities have conducted internal research and discovered that homeschool graduates have GPAs above the college average, Klicka said. One four-year study conducted by Drs. Rhonda Galloway and Joe Sutton comparing homeschool college students with private and public school students found that homeschoolers ranked first in 10 out of 12 academic indicators.

Such research, mixed with “an unbroken track record” of success on achievement tests including the SAT, causes colleges to accept home-school graduates, Klicka said.
Admissions discrimination?

Today, college admission departments by and large are no longer “putting up barriers” for homeschool graduates, Young said. “Some have in the past required additional testing simply to validate the kind of grade that students had on their transcripts, but if a student has college work from a community college or some other kind of outside class, that would tend to validate the transcript that is created by the parents,” he said.

Klicka said that the last barrier was torn down when Congress passed the Higher Education Act in 1997. Discrimination was fairly common 10 years ago, Klicka said, but now it is as “rare as a comet.”

“We’ve had other issues that have popped up from time to time with discrimination, but pretty much it just takes a phone call, a little bit of persuasion, and a little bit of facts and figures, and the colleges say we don’t need to keep this up,” Klicka said.

David N. Bass is a contributing editor of Carolina Journal.

RALEIGH — Preserve the habitat of an endangered woodpecker or protect private property rights — that’s the apparent quandary residents are facing in Brunswick County’s Boiling Spring Lakes region.

Red-cockaded woodpeckers, which were once plentiful across the Southeast, now are protected under the 1973 federal Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that only 6,000 groups and 15,000 individual birds remain.

One of the few locations where the woodpeckers still thrive is Boiling Spring Lakes, a small community south of Wilmington containing prime coastal real estate. But after the Fish and Wildlife Service became involved in a local conservation effort more than a year ago, many residents faced new restrictions on what they could lawfully do with their property.

According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, the woodpeckers are similar in size to North Carolina’s state bird, the cardinal. The species is named after the red streak found on each side of the male’s black cap, known as a “cockade.” As a species, the woodpeckers have stringent habitat needs. According to Pete Benjamin, field supervisor for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Raleigh, the woodpeckers prefer to nest in mature longleaf pine forests.

“They are the only woodpecker in North America that makes its cavity in a living tree, which makes it somewhat unique,” Benjamin said. “A family of woodpeckers requires at least 75 acres, and preferably 120 or more acres, of this mature pine forest to make their cavities and to feed.”

Pristine habitat locations have grown scarce over the years, to the detriment of the woodpeckers. Longleaf pines were once plentiful across the United States, Benjamin said, being the dominant forest type in the Southeast and covering about 100 million acres. Because of extensive logging in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the number has dropped to three million acres.

That trend has particularly affected the woodpeckers—they prefer longleaf pines both for nesting purposes and for feeding on the insects that populate the trees. In addition, the woodpeckers do not migrate, choosing instead to gain everything needed for survival from their longleaf pine habitat.

“It’s a surprising amount of habitat that they need in order to get the resources, the food, to sustain themselves and to reproduce,” Benjamin said. “You need quite a lot of acreage to have any sizable population of woodpeckers in any area.”

Specifically in North Carolina, the Boiling Spring Lakes region is perfectly suited to the exacting habitat standards of the woodpecker. The town is one of the few areas in Brunswick County that still supports the necessary natural resources for the bird, Benjamin said.

But that fact has presented a problem—since the woodpeckers are protected under the Endangered Species Act, landowners that have nesting sites on their land face development regulations that can often infringe on property rights.

Endangered Species Act regulations

The Endangered Species Act protects endangered species from “take,” meaning any effort to “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect.” The act also forbids damage to the habitat of endangered species that might result in harm to protected animals. In order to bypass the act’s regulations, landowners are required to obtain a federal permit, a process that entails added cost and time delays.

Residents are concerned about the limitations and added expense, said Joan Kinney, mayor of Boiling Spring Lakes. “The landowners, of course, are concerned, because all of a sudden that piece of property that they have is limited as far as building,” Kinney said. About 2,750 lots are affected by the regulations, all of them within the city limits.

Benjamin admitted that obtaining authorization is time-consuming. “If [your land] is occupied red-cockaded woodpecker habitat, and the clearing of trees to build a house is going to result in harm to the family of woodpeckers occupying that territory, then folks need authorization from the Fish and Wildlife Service before they cut down those trees,” he said. The federal permitting process could take more than a year, Benjamin said.

Despite the time requirements for a permit, Benjamin said that no regulations are going to prevent property owners in Boiling Spring Lakes from developing their land. “At the end of the day, everyone will be able to do whatever they want with their property,” he said. “No one is going to be denied use of their property because of these woodpeckers.”

But Kinney has already seen a loss of property value and a reduction in new development in the town. “We’ve already seen the growth decrease tremendously,” she said.

In terms of the local economy, the environmental regulations have had two direct affects on the real estate market, said Steve Candler, government affairs director for the Brunswick County Association of Realtors. Fewer new homes being built translates into fewer listings for Realtors, causing some real estate agents to struggle financially and two realty offices to close in recent months, Candler said. Some people also mistakenly perceive that the town is “closed for business” and that development is prohibited.

“This is far from the truth,” Candler said. “After the [Realtors] stepped up to the plate and partnered with the Nature Conservancy, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the North Carolina Wildlife Resource Commission to move the process forward and to educate the citizens and landowners on the grant process, some of the panic and ‘doom and gloom’ has disappeared.”

Protection vs. property rights

One question facing the town is how to balance conservation efforts with protecting the constitutional private property rights of landowners.

Benjamin said that he understands the frustration residents face and that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working to alleviate some of the angst. One of the ways to do that is by streamlining the permitting process to make it “more accessible” and “less cumbersome” for single-family lot owners.

“That’s what we’re working on now—trying to get some sort of streamlined process in place for the residents of Boiling Spring Lakes so that they don’t need to go through a protracted permitting process with the federal government,” he said.

But Rick Stroup, visiting professor of economics at North Carolina State University, said that environmental regulations that cause a reduction in property value to the owner are “counterproductive” and “inequitable” in many cases. In a 1995 research paper that discussed potential changes to the Endangered Species Act, Stroup argued that changing “the status of endangered species from the landowner’s enemy to the landowner’s friend” would make the act more effective on private property. Stroup suggested revising the act to recognize that a property right has been taken when the federal government imposes habitat standards on landowners.

“If such recognition occurs, the Fish and Wildlife Service will have to follow the clause of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution that requires compensation when the government takes property,” Stroup wrote. “So far, no actions of the Fish and Wildlife Service under the ESA have been judged to be ‘takings’ of property rights.”

Stroup said that eliminating “specific disincentives” from the act is one fundamental change needing to be made. In his paper, Stroup also emphasized the importance of involving the private sector in environmental protection. “A number of federal laws could be changed to allow environmental groups to bid for the lease or purchase of federal lands to protect endangered species habitat (or pursue other environmental goals),” he wrote.

But at least to Kinney, changing federal regulations is not an option. “[The regulations are] federally mandated and unfortunately there’s not much we can do except try to figure out what is the best plan for our city,” she said. “We’re still in the process of looking at all the possibilities, and have not come up with anything concrete yet.”

Landowner panic?

According to a Raleigh News and Observer article published in August, some residents of Boiling Spring Lakes are taking matters into their own hands by cutting down longleaf pines on their property before the woodpeckers show up. Once wooded lots are now “scraped bare to the white sandy soil,” causing alarm among city leaders, the article said.

Kinney said that Boiling Spring Lakes is not having as much trouble with clear-cutting today because of a tree ordinance recently approved by the Town Council.

“No one can cut these larger trees down unless they come to us with an application for a building permit to build a house on that property,” she said.

“I think a lot of [the tree cutting] was generated by some misinformation and resulting fear on the part of the citizens,” Benjamin said.

Landowners are not compensated in any way for delays or expenses incurred by the regulations, Benjamin said. “It is frustrating for landowners, I know,” he said. “We’re working to alleviate some of that frustration. We’re not there yet. We will get there, one way or another.”

Is coexistence possible?

In an effort to protect ecology and endangered species, environmental groups and initiatives such as the Wildlands Project are attempting to reserve “safe passageways” for wildlife throughout North America. These set-aside areas would be closed to humans except for traditional national park activities, such as hiking, primitive camping, and wildlife observation. But at least in Boiling Spring Lakes, the consensus seems to be that forced isolation is unnecessary—mankind and wildlife can coexist without difficulty.

“These birds can live and get along quite well in a suburban sort of environment,” Benjamin said. “Woodpeckers and people can coexist quite peaceably, so it’s not really a question of the birds versus the people or development versus preservation or any of those things you commonly hear.”

Kinney said that the woodpeckers will nest in neighborhoods and are not found strictly in undeveloped or remote areas. “People have them in their front yard or in their back yard,” she said.

In fact, the woodpeckers at Fort Bragg military base, another region containing populations of the endangered woodpeckers, might actually prefer being near humans rather than in remote areas. Since the base implemented conservation tactics around a decade ago, the woodpeckers have surprised environmentalists and military personnel alike by increasing in number much faster than anticipated. A Fort Bragg press release in June reported that the woodpeckers’ numbers have risen from 238 clusters in 1992 to 368 clusters today.

Mike Lynch, director of plans, training, and mobilization for Fort Bragg, said that the woodpeckers will commonly nest in spots where human activity takes place.

“They will go where the habitat is, and if that habitat is in a very heavily used training area with soldiers in and around it, they will go there; if it is off in the far corner where very few people go, they will go there,” he said. “They’re really looking for a good habitat that’s free of obstruction—not a lot of undergrowth, not a lot of debris that would allow predators to easily infiltrate their nests, and if you have that, they will do quite well.”

While the base initially had training restrictions in place prohibiting human activity near woodpecker nesting sites, Lynch said that restricted areas have decreased over the years until today when the base is working with Fish and Wildlife Service to relax all of the restrictions.

“[The birds] are everywhere,” he said. “We have a little phrase around here that they must like soldiers, because everywhere soldiers are, you’ll find woodpeckers.”

“We’ve learned over time that you can meet your training mission, protect the species, and do positive good by protecting the environment, protecting your landscape and your forests for the long-term,” Lynch said. “And, of course, since this is the only land we have, we’re very interested in maintaining it so that we can train soldiers here for hundreds of years to come.”

On the issue of whether the woodpeckers can be protected and whether economic growth is still possible in Boiling Spring Lakes, Stroup sees action in the private sector as helpful. “Private preservation would work, as would the rental by agencies of private (or other agency) land for specific habitat work,” he said.

From a realty and marketing perspective, Candler said he thinks that the woodpeckers could actually attract residents to the town by creating a unique coastal environment. “The barrier islands have their sea turtles—Boiling Spring Lakes has their red-cockaded woodpeckers,” he said.

Benjamin said that the woodpeckers and humans could coexist if the “necessary processes” are in place. “There’s just some planning necessary to make sure that happens,” he said. “And when it does happen, and it will happen, one way or another, the people of Boiling Spring Lakes will be better off, and the woodpeckers will be better off.”

David N. Bass is a contributing editor of Carolina Journal

In January of this year, the medical community received the news that a new source for stem cells had been discovered—one that did not require the destruction of human embryos and that may have the capability to treat numerous diseases and conditions. In the center of this buzz was the Institute for Regenerative Medicine (IRM) at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C. directed by, Dr. Anthony Atala. He and his associates at IRM have already experienced a number of succeses.”

AFS Cells
In an article published in the journal Nature Biotechnology, Atala and his team of researchers described how they extracted stem cells from the amniotic fluid that surrounds developing embryos in pregnant women. Researchers also discovered similar stem cells in the placenta and other membranes that are expelled after birth. The new stem cells, called “amniotic fluid-derived” stem (AFS) cells, have already been used to create “muscle, bone, fat, blood vessel, nerve and liver cells in the laboratory,” according to an IRM press release. Amniotic fluid-derived cells can be grown in large quantities and do not produce tumors, a side effect commonly seen in other types of stem cells. A stem cell bank hosting 100,000 specimens could ostensibly provide 99 percent of the American population with transplantation options, Atala said.

The stem cell breakthrough is particularly noteworthy since the research avoids the ethical implications of embryonic stem cell research (ESCR), a process that necessitates the destruction of a human embryo in order to harvest its stem cells. Many Americans believe embryonic stem cell research is equivalent to abortion because the stem cell extraction process ends a human life. On the other hand, the pro-life community has embraced adult stem cell research (ASCR), which uses human organs such as umbilical cord blood and bone marrow to extract stem cells that can be engineered to become new tissue for treatment purposes.

Dr. David Prentice, Senior Fellow for Life Sciences at the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., called IRM’s research on amniotic stem cells “very promising” and said that researchers have thoroughly verified their results. “These non-embryonic stem cells show all the positives most scientists claim they want, yet without the ethical baggage and scientific problems of embryonic stem cells,” Prentice said. “I’d anticipate that other researchers will turn their efforts to using these cells for therapeutic treatments, as well as the possibility of banking amniotic fluid and placental stem cells.”

IRM is also involved in other avenues of regenerative medicinal research. Researchers there are currently concentrating on developing treatments for “diabetes, pancreases, livers, kidneys, and other kinds of neurological organs.” Dr. Atala has also spearheaded efforts to create replacement organs for patients suffering from poor bladder function resulting from congenital birth defects. The replacement bladders, created from the patients’ own cells in order to avoid rejection, are “functional” and “durable,” Atala said.

Ethical Hurdles

To many in the pro-life community, including Prentice, alternative methods like amniotic fluid-derived cells provide an ethical option for researchers. Such non-embryonic stem cell methods are responsible for a variety of treatments currently being employed, while no embryonic stem cell research has resulted in approved treatments or human trials. “The amniotic fluid stem cells show all the advantages desired in a stem cell—the flexibility to form various tissues of the body, easy collection, large-scale growth —but don’t have the disadvantages of tumor formation seen with embryonic stem cells,” Prentice said. “They are also ethically acceptable, because they do not require destruction of the donor, which is the case with embryonic stem cells.”

Prentice added that amniotic fluid-derived cells “are definitely more controllable than embryonic stem cells,” especially in the area of tumors. “[AMS cells] are easily collected and grow well in the laboratory, so that large numbers of cells can be accumulated for experiments or for clinical use,” he said. “The researchers have also already shown that they can produce different cell types that have potential to treat disease and injury.”

One of the key downsides of human embryo-derived stem cells is their unstable nature. According to Wesley Smith, senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, problems with embryonic stem cell research include tissue rejection and tumor formation in animal experiments. “These and other significant scientific obstacles facing embryonic-stem-cell researchers mean that treatments from this source of stem cells are unlikely to become a part of medicine’s armamentarium at the clinical level for more than a decade—if ever,” Smith said.

Moreover, embryonic stem cell research experienced at least one major ethical scandal beyond the question of the sanctity of human life. In late 2005, evidence arose that South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk falsified research involving allegedly cloned embryonic stem cell lines created at Seoul National University. Hwang and his research associates drew national attention in May 2005 when they published an article in the journal Science claiming to have cloned patient-specific embryonic stem cells. If true, the breakthrough would have overcome a major obstacle embryomic stem cell research currently faces—the immune system’s rejection of stem cells not derived directly from the patient in question.

Meanwhile, the scientific community, research publications, and the popular media continue to focus on embryonic stem cell research to the point that treatments derived from adult stem cells get “the short end of the stick,” according to author Michael Fumento.

To Prentice, the national push for research on human embryos is attributable to either political motivation or a “misunderstanding” that alternative stem cell sources are already providing treatments for patients. “If more people realized the fact that non-embryonic stem cells have the greatest promise for treating disease soon, we’d be focusing our resources on the successful research,” Prentice said.

David Bass is a research assistant with the North Carolina Family Policy Council.

RALEIGH — Faced with the threat of forced conversion to a year-round public school schedule in Wake County, Cary resident Linda Hayduk and her husband are taking matters into their own hands by leaving the county rather than allow the reassignment to split their family apart.

“We’re a family who has elected not to participate in too many extra-curricular activities because we want our family to eat dinner together more than once a month like some families do,” Hayduk said. “We are moving because we believe in public schools, but not Wake County public schools. Not anymore.”

Many Wake residents share Hayduk’s concern. Local parents say that mandatory conversion from a traditional to year-round calendar would separate their families and throw a wrench into the social and academic schedules of their children.

Melissa Inglis, an Apex mother of three, said that her middle daughter was devastated at the thought of not being able to attend the same school as her older sister. “We’re a pretty close-knit family,” Inglis said. “It’s not just our vacation time. It’s the fact that it’s going to split up my family. My kids like each other. They like to play together, and their childhood is so short.”

Mandatory conversion is a growing schism across the county. On Feb. 6, the Wake County Board of Education approved a growth management plan for the 2007-08 school year that transfers 10,762 students around the county, including 2,335 year-round conversion assignments, according to a Wake County Public School System press release. The plan estimates that Wake County’s enrollment will increase by 8,000 students next year.

The school board has been at odds with the Wake County Board of Commissioners over the reassignment plan. School board Chairwoman Patti Head sent a letter to county commissioners Feb. 5 reiterating a request for funding and stating that year-round schools are necessary to meet enrollment growth. Commissioners voted, 4-3, the same day to deny allocation of $4.7 million to help convert traditional schools to year-round formats.

Many area residents point to aspects such as family stability as a primary concern with the year-round conversion. According to Dave Duncan of Stop Mandatory Year-Round, the reassignment push boils down to philosophy.

“There are some who really buy into wanting kids in school even more days,” he said. “For many kids, [parents] choose activities outside of the school to enrich their lives. Wake County seems to forget that the strength of your community is the family unit, not the classroom. The classroom is supposed to support that. They have a hard time thinking beyond the walls of their classrooms.”

Family togetherness is one reason for opposing the conversion plan, according to Dawn Wagner, a mother of three with children in elementary, middle, and high school.

“With the age ranges of our children, there are very few opportunities to have something where all three children are on the same schedule, be it anything,” she said. “School was really the only thing we could count on to have all the children on the same page, and that’s no more. The reason we had a family is so that [our children] could have brothers and sisters and have the opportunity to play with them and be a family together.”

Wagner said that her youngest child is the most affected by the reassignment. “He wants to move,” she said. “He’s just very upset. He doesn’t want to be in school.”

Parents are also frustrated over what they see as inattentiveness by school board members. “Unfortunately, in this Wake County school system, they have a lot of power, and they make changes accordingly,” said Tim Inglis, director of mobilization for Stop Mandatory Year-Round. “Talking to the county is like a tsunami—it just keeps coming at you.”

Similarly, Hayduk thinks that school board public hearings addressing the issue of reassignment have not been genuine. She thinks the school board made its decision before conversion plans were announced to the public.

“It doesn’t seem like they’ve explored every option,” Hayduk said. “It seems like they’ve been set on this, no matter what.”

Ron Margiotta, a District 8 school board member from Apex who opposes the year-round conversion, said that families are looking for educational alternatives. “Many people look outside the public schools, but private schools are packed,” he said. “We also have parents who are joining together and actually opening a private school.”

Parents are moving toward private and public alternatives such as charter schools, Inglis said. “The waiting list for any and all private schools is longer than they’ve ever had it,” he said. “[Parents] are looking for charter school options, some for magnets. There’s a waiting list for getting a book on homeschooling from the library.”

Inglis also said that the issue of year-round assignments was used as leverage to gain support for the $970 million bond referendum narrowly approved by voters in November. A good number of parents supported the bond with the understanding that they would be able to negotiate with the school board regarding year-round conversions, Inglis said.

“Some of us supported it, some of us didn’t, but the idea was that we would at least be able to talk,” Inglis said.

Reassignment plans could actually backfire if wealthier families choose to remove their children from the public school system in favor of private options, Duncan said. “Wake County thinks it’s got these growing diverse populations,” he said. “What they’ve refused to recognize is that they’re losing the one population that they’re trying to leverage, and that is the affluent — those who can afford to opt out and sign their kids up somewhere else.”

Duncan said he would like to send his children to private school or take advantage of a charter school option, but neither is feasible because of financial constraints and the sheer number of students trying to get in.

David N. Bass is an editorial intern at Carolina Journal.

RALEIGH — With the N.C. lottery marking its one-year anniversary in March, the lottery’s executive director is already predicting that revenue devoted to education will be significantly less than state lawmakers appropriated in fiscal 2006-2007 budget.

Lottery proceeds are expected to fall short of General Assembly estimates by $75 million, according to Tom Shaheen, executive director for the N.C. Education Lottery. In the budget approved last session, lawmakers appropriated $425 million in lottery revenue to school funding, but Shaheen predicts that the lottery will garner $1 billion in total revenue by the close of fiscal 2007, providing $350 million for education beneficiary programs.

According to a NCEL press release in January, the numbers game took in about $670 million and paid out $298 million in prizes in 2006. In order to reach the estimated $1 billion revenue target, the lottery must generate $330 million in ticket sales between the first of the year and June 30, the end of the current fiscal year. Shaheen said that, given a shortfall, the $50 million in the Education Lottery Reserve Fund could be used to supplement the difference, leaving a deficit of $25 million.

The numbers game generated $233.1 million in sales during the first quarter of the current fiscal year, earning as much $8 million the first day that tickets went on sale, according to NCEL estimates. But since then, sales have been unable to keep pace with initial projections, despite the introduction of several new game formats in October.

Reasons for the shortfall

Shaheen said that online games — including Powerball, Carolina Pick 3, and Carolina Cash 5—are performing as expected. “It is the instant scratch-off games that are not meeting expectations,” he said. “Our players tell us it is due to the prize payout.”

Shaheen also suggested that high gasoline prices might be a factor in reduced ticket sales, according to the Charlotte Observer.

John Rustin, a lobbyist for the N.C. Family Policy Council, an organization that opposed passage of the lottery in the Assembly, said that one reason lottery earnings are less than anticipated is due to faulty revenue estimates drawn from neighboring states before passage of lottery legislation.

“If the estimates were drawn using revenue data from Virginia and Georgia without adjusting down for out of state purchases…then the numbers for North Carolina where overestimated, because when North Carolina got the lottery, we had no comparable non-lottery border state from which to draw revenue,” Rustin said.

Prior to approval of the state-sponsored lottery in August 2005, pro-lottery lawmakers and government officials touted the numbers game as a steady revenue source for education. In his 2003 State of the State address, Gov. Mike Easley emphasized that keeping lottery dollars in North Carolina would reduce class size, fund pre-kindergarten initiatives, generate $200 million annually for school construction, and create new jobs.

“When you are sitting here this year, struggling with the budget, just remember that your colleagues in 39 other states have a revenue source that you do not have,” Easley told lawmakers. “That makes it more difficult for you to improve education and keep taxes down.”

But Rustin said that initial estimates were inflated to make the numbers game appear more attractive. “Throughout the lottery debate over the past several years, the anticipated net revenue numbers offered by the governor and other lottery supporters continued to rise, seemingly without justification,” he said.

Despite past assurances that lottery funds would be used exclusively for education programs, government officials are also expected to use lottery proceeds to supplant about $200 million general fund dollars devoted to schools, according to February 2006 article in The News and Observer of Raleigh. Dan Gerlach, the governor’s senior policy advisor for fiscal affairs, told the N&O that the supplanted funds would still be used for education funding.

Are lottery funds helping?

On Jan. 23, the NCEL made its third payment for fiscal 2006-07 by transferring more than $75.3 million to the Education Lottery Fund. The Department of Public Instruction is responsible for allocating the funds to various education initiatives. The fiscal 2006-07 budget appropriated nearly $128 million in lottery proceeds for reducing class size, $84.6 million for pre-kindergarten programs, $170 million for school construction, and $42.5 million for scholarships for needy children.

DPI Director of School Support Services Ben Matthews, who is directly involved with overseeing lottery funds that are earmarked for school construction, said that NCEL has not informed him how close to the $170 million appropriation the actual lottery payments will be.

“It was very clear that we were going to have to have some flexibility in dealing with this because we weren’t going to know exactly what the lottery proceeds would be,” he said.

According to a preliminary facility needs survey prepared by DPI and the State Board of Education, about $9.7 billion will be needed exclusively for school construction over the next five years alone. Matthews said that while lottery proceeds are “a drop in the bucket statewide,” lottery money is still helping to fund capital construction.

“One thing that this lottery piece has done is give, for the first time in my life and I believe ever, a state stream of revenue for capital construction,” he said.

According to DPI’s 2006 lottery distribution chart, North Carolina counties received $38 million for school construction from the $95 million total payment made by the NCEL in October. Of the $38 million, nearly one-fourth is going to three of the state’s largest counties—Wake, $2.23 million; Mecklenburg, $4.35 million; and Guilford, $2.37 million.

Matthews said that it’s still too soon to tell how substantially lottery revenues are helping to meet education needs. “It may be a little early to predict how this will turn out,” he said. “I don’t know that truly we will experience a shortfall until we get through an entire year of dealing with this.”

David N. Bass is an editorial intern for Carolina Journal.

News earlier this week that researchers at Wake Forest University and Harvard Medical School have uncovered a new non-controversial stem cell treatment did nothing to stem the tide of pro-embryonic stem cell madness that swept Congress on Thursday.

In a vote that still fell well short of the two-thirds majority required to overcome a presidential veto, the U.S. House passed H.R. 3 by a 253 to 174 margin Jan. 11. The bill would lift restrictions established by President Bush in 2001 that prevent federal dollars from being used for additional research involving the destruction of human embryos.

Completely side-stepping the morality of annihilating human life in the name of curing disease, Rep. Diana Degette, D–Colo., the bill’s primary sponsor, expressed elation in a prepared statement after the legislation passed.

“This is a victory for ethical science as well as true bipartisanship,” she said. “Most importantly, it is a victory for the 100 million Americans and their families who suffer from diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and diabetes.”

Such rhetoric is nothing new from Washington politicians. The troubling reality is that even scientists currently experimenting with embryonic stem cells admit that cures are years and perhaps decades away from coming to fruition. Yet that hasn’t halted the rhetorical firestorm from Washington.

John Edwards eloquently displayed such blather in 2004 by suggesting that a vote for John Kerry was a vote for helping Christopher Reeve out of his wheelchair.

What’s the next promise – that embryonic stem cells will cause humans to walk on water and raise the dead?

For all their talk about cures, though, the nagging question is why Democrats and liberal-minded Republicans in Congress habitually extol the miraculous benefits of embryonic stem cells while downplaying the myriad ethical alternatives. The rhetoric is even more hypocritically in light of the fact that non-embryonic stem cell research is already revealing the kinds of treatments Edwards is looking for, but without the dubious ethical implications.

Earlier this week at Wake Forest’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C., Dr. Anthony Atala and his research team announced they were able to extract stem cells from the amniotic fluid that surrounds the developing fetus in pregnant women.

The amniotic-fluid derived stem cells are believed to closely resemble those found in human embryos. In fact, the stem cells have already been used to create “muscle, bone, fat, blood vessel, nerve and liver cells in the laboratory,” according to an Institute for Regenerative Medicine press release.

So, with the IRM research, not to mention the other treatments developed from adult stem cells, why does Congress have an apparent obsession with destructive embryonic stem cell research?

I can tell you in one word: abortion.

Those who subscribe to the pro-abortion ideology have very little wiggle room when it comes to the value of an embryo. After all, what makes medical experimentation on human embryos immoral if life begins at some unspecified date after conception or birth? In that case, embryos are merely “products of conception” wholly lacking any human worth, right?

This is the chief reason embryonic stem cell research is being pushed so feverishly, even in the face of non-controversial alternatives. To admit even the slightest possibility that an embryo might have human worth would be to violate the sacrosanct pro-abortion philosophy. Why else would abortion advocacy organizations like Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America so strongly support embryonic stem cell research? Stem cells seemingly have nothing to do with abortion, birth control or “sexual liberation,” so why the big fuss?

The answer is simple: For all their talk about choice, abortion advocates have only one option on the stem cell issue. Anything less than no-holds-barred embryo research would violate their ideology – they can’t afford not to support it.

It’s a sad cultural commentary when any nation sanctions abuse and manipulation of the weak to improve the livelihood of the strong, especially in the name of political philosophy. Throughout history, evil is almost always tied to a socially desirable idea that gives it a tolerable face, and embryonic stem cell research is no different.

The question for the American people is whether we will settle for evil cloaked around a “good idea” or uphold one of the highest ideals known to man – the sacredness of every human life.

In the moments before 18-year-old Holly Patterson died of septic shock resulting from a botched abortion, her parents gathered in the critical care unit at Valley Care Medical Center in Pleasanton, California, to watch helplessly as their daughter’s life ebbed away.

“[We] will never be able to forget those last moments of her life when she was too weak to talk and could barely squeeze our hands in acknowledgement of our words of encouragement,” wrote Monty and Helen Patterson in a letter released shortly after Holly passed away on September 17, 2003. The Pattersons recalled their daughter’s “brilliant blue eyes, engaging smile, laughter, unwavering determination and sheer gentle beauty,” but candidly described their feelings of “disbelief and desperation” as the young woman edged toward death.[1]

Holly’s untimely passing occurred after she took RU-486, a two-part abortion drug designed to end pregnancies up to 49 days after the last menstrual cycle. Holly began taking the abortifacient, obtained from a local Planned Parenthood clinic, just one week before her death. When Holly complained of severe cramping soon after taking the drug, her hospital prescribed a painkiller and sent her home. She died just days later from sepsis, a bloodstream bacterial infection.

Since the tragic death of their daughter in 2003, the Pattersons have worked tirelessly to educate lawmakers and the public about the dangers of this abortion drug. Yet Planned Parenthood maintains that RU-486 has been proven “safe, effective, and acceptable”[2] and has endeavored to downplay other deaths and complications associated with the drug.

Although Planned Parenthood remains one of America’s foremost champions of abortion rights, most North Carolinians, and Americans in general, remain woefully uneducated about the organization’s history, philosophy, practices, and goals. This article will briefly examine several key components that have helped make Planned Parenthood what it is today—transformed from a small birth control clinic in a New York suburb into a multi-million dollar industry that holds vast political and cultural power in America and across the globe.

Services Offered

To Cheryle Freiberger, Planned Parenthood’s mentality can be summed up in three words—”sex without consequences.”

Freiberger should know. She worked at a family planning clinic in South Carolina several years after undergoing an abortion herself in 1974. She vigorously promoted abortion in her counseling sessions, especially among young girls. “Encouraging women to have an abortion was partly a way to justify what I had done,” she said. “It gave me some comfort, and I really felt that I was doing the world a favor by keeping these girls from having children.”

In fact, one of Planned Parenthood’s policy positions is to work against “rapid population growth” around the world in an effort to raise the quality of human life.[3] Both Planned Parenthood and its close ally, NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina, declined to comment for this article. However, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s “reason for being” statement on their website outlines four core goals—provide unfettered access to contraception and abortion, advocate public policies to bolster the family planning agenda, provide sex education programs, and promote research into reproductive health technology.[4] There are more than 860 Planned Parenthood affiliate health centers across the nation,[5] and the family planning organization maintains a strong international presence as well.

Planned Parenthood is active in nearly every race, age, and income demographic, including teenagers. The organization has even designed a sexually explicit website specifically targeting adolescents. One article on the site deals with the topic of bisexuality, assuring teens that “it’s natural to be confused about your sexual identity” and warning to avoid discussing such matters with parents if they are unsupportive of different sexual orientations.[6] A network of Planned Parenthood facilities in California went so far as to offer free movie tickets and iPods to lure teens to clinic locations.[7]

“Planned Parenthood over-sexualizes children at such a young age,” Freiberger said. “They treat sex as recreational. That’s the whole mentality of Planned Parenthood.”

Follow the Money

As with any organization or industry, following the money trail provides a good indication of a group’s true values, beliefs, and mission. With Planned Parenthood, the case is no different. According to Planned Parenthood’s 2004-2005 annual report, the non-profit received $882 million in revenue (generated from such services as emergency contraception kits, STD examinations, and abortion procedures) and showed a $63 million excess of revenue over expenses. More startling is the fact that $272.7 million came directly from taxpayers in the form of government grants and contracts.[8]

At the state level, the numbers are no less disconcerting. Planned Parenthood Health Systems, Inc., (PPHSI) has offices in three southern states, including North Carolina. According to the organization’s IRS 990 forms for the 2005 fiscal year, PPHSI garnered $4.75 million in revenue and paid over $2 million in wages and benefits to its employees,[9] including $127,378 to Walter Klausmeier, president and chief executive.[10]

“Abortion is a huge business for them, as well as the dispensing of birth control, and now the dispensing of the morning after pill,” said Blake Honeycutt, executive director of Carolina Pregnancy Center in Greenville, N.C. She said that pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) cut into abortion industry revenue and profits, which is one of the reasons pro-abortion groups have targeted pro-life clinics. In fact, NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina released a report in July 2006 accusing PRCs of using “lies and scare tactics to prevent women from making informed choices about abortion.”

“A lot of it has to do with finances and monies that are appropriated for different things,” Honeycutt said. “It’s no secret that [Planned Parenthood] gets huge governmental funds and that pregnancy resource centers across the nation would love to get some of that money. We get very little, if any. We get a few dollars here and there, but I’m sure that they don’t like that, because it’s competition for dollars.”

Given the cost of each abortion procedure, it’s little wonder that Planned Parenthood is flourishing. According to a survey conducted in 2001 by authors Stanley Henshaw and Lawrence B. Finer, the average amount charged by abortion providers ranged from $468 for a surgical abortion at 10 weeks gestation to well over $1,000 for the procedure at 20 weeks. Abortion rates, however, can range as high as $4,000.[11]

In 2004, Planned Parenthood affiliates performed 255,015 abortions but only referred out 1,414 adoptions to other agencies. The organization also issued 983,537 emergency contraception kits.[12]

Local to our state, Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina (PPCNC) charges $375 for a medication abortion, the same kind that led to complications and the ultimate death of Holly Patterson. Prices rise substantially from there, with PPCNC charging as much as $1475 for an invasive, or “surgical,” abortion.[13]

Protecting Health?

Over the years, Planned Parenthood has profited greatly from promulgating the idea that unfettered access to abortion is synonymous with supporting women’s health. But in an industry that thrives on secrecy, the painful aftershocks of abortion are routinely swept under the carpet. The organization insists that “most women feel relief” after an abortion and only a few experience emotional side effects for a short period of time.[14]

Kathryn Berkowitz disagrees. She endured terrible remorse and depression following her abortion in 1979. Berkowitz had been going to Planned Parenthood’s Winston-Salem clinic to receive birth control, but she still ended up pregnant. “I feel like they do give a lot of information, but there is so much information that they don’t give,” she said. Berkowitz added that Planned Parenthood gives “a false sense of security with contraceptives,” and doesn’t talk to women about the ramification if they do become pregnant.

The same experience holds true for many victims of abortion, according to Dr. Martha Shuping, a psychiatrist who specializes in treating post-abortive women. “There is a spectrum of psychiatric illness that seems to be related to abortion,” she said. “Women have problems [after the procedure], and when they talk to their psychiatrist, often they’re blown off. A lot of psychiatrists are used to just medicating things, but not everything goes away with a pill.”

Depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome are common emotional symptoms of abortion that Shuping witnesses. She said that post-abortive women might fear the sound of a vacuum cleaner because it reminds them of the abortion suction apparatus, or they might have a fear of attending baby showers or being in the presence of small children.

“They don’t want to be around anything that reminds them, because it brings back all the emotional trauma,” Shuping said, adding that women will also engage in self-destructive behavior, including cutting themselves for punishment or as a reminder of the abortion because of the bleeding.

Danelle Hallenbeck, a post-abortive woman who is now an active member of the pro-life community, admits that she started down a self-destructive path 13 years ago after undergoing an abortion. “I had no self-esteem,” she said. “I thought of suicide a lot. I was very unhappy—a workaholic. I went to several different psychiatrists, and it was interesting because I would tell them everything that was wrong and that made me the victim, but I was so ashamed to tell them that I got an abortion. I would get all these anti-depressants and things, and they would work for a while, but then my pain would just keep coming back.”

Shuping said that the pro-abortion community is purposefully ignoring the plight of women who suffer as a result of abortion due to their zealousness for choice. “They want to preserve choice,” she said. “They don’t want the facts to interfere with what they’re trying to accomplish, even though there is clear evidence that women are being harmed. They don’t want women’s stories being told.”

A Culture of Death

So, what’s Planned Parenthood’s vision for the future? At the 2001 Planned Parenthood Annual Conference, board members and delegates voted to approve the Planned Parenthood Vision 2025, an outline of “audacious goals” they hope to accomplish over the next two decades. The objectives outlined by the Vision included the development of new reproductive technologies (such as RU-486), becoming an “authoritative force” on bio-ethical issues, and building “the largest donor and citizen activist base of any social movement” in America.[15]

The disturbing truth is that Planned Parenthood’s vision is succeeding, both in North Carolina and the nation as a whole. As a pro-life leader, Dr. Lillie Epps of Care Net said that she has seen a shift in American culture over the last few decades. “Maybe 20 years ago, you didn’t see girls coming into pregnancy resource centers with this whole pro-abortion mindset,” she said. “Because they have grown up in a society where abortion is legal, they view it as a right. I think what has changed is that these young girls have grown up with this concept of using abortion as birth control. It’s definitely a culture of death.”

David Bass is a research assistant with the North Carolina Family Policy Council.

Endnotes

[1] “Public Letter From Parents of Holly Patterson.” Arkansas Right to Life. Available online at http://www.artl.org/ru486_patterson.html. Accessed November 27, 2006.

[2] “Mifepristone: Expanding Women’s Options for Early Abortion.” Planned Parenthood. Available online at http://www.plannedparenthood.org/news-articles-press/politics-policy-issues/abortion-access/mifepristone-6128.htm. Accessed November 27, 2006.

[3] “Mission & Policy Statements.” Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Available online at http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/mission-and-policy-statements.htm. Accessed November 30, 2006.

[4] Ibid.

[5] “Planned Parenthood by the Numbers.” Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Available online at http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/planned-parenthood-by-the-numbers.htm. Accessed December 5, 2006.

[6] Yudt, Susan and Wendy Riser. “Bi The Way…” TeenWire.com. Available online at http://www.teenwire.com/infocus/2002/if-20020724p147.php. Accessed November 21, 2006.

[7] Ertelt, Steven. “Planned Parenthood Abortion Centers Lure Teens With iPods, Movie Tickets.” Available online at http://www.lifenews.com/nat2175.html. Accessed November 29, 2006.

[8] “Annual Report, 2004-2005.” Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. Pg. 24.

[9] 2005 IRS Form 990. Planned Parenthood Health Systems, Inc. Available online at http://www.guidestar.org/pqShowGsReport.do?npoId=192337. Accessed November 15, 2006.

[10] Ibid. Pg. 4.

[11] Henshaw, Stanley K. and Lawrence B. Fisher. “The Accessibility of Abortion Services in the United States, 2001.” Guttmacher Institute. Available online at http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3501603.html. Accessed November 15, 2006.

[12] “Annual Report, 2004-2005.” Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. Pg. 7.

[13] “Abortion Services.” Planned Parenthood. Available online at http://www.plannedparenthood.org/centralnc/abortion-services.htm. Accessed November 15, 2006.

[14] “Risks & Side Effects.” Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Available online at http://www.plannedparenthood.org/birth-control-pregnancy/abortion/risks-and-side-effects.htm.

[15] “Planned Parenthood Vision for 2025.” Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Available online at http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/-planned-parenthood-vision-for-2025-.htm. Accessed December 5, 2006.

RALEIGH — Religious faiths, particularly Protestantism, Catholicism, Asian Ethnoreligion, and Hinduism, have a positive effect on a nation’s respect for the rule of law and level of corruption, according to a Baylor University research paper.

The paper, “Religion, Corruption, and the Rule of Law,” compares predominant world religions and discusses what role the faiths play in shaping a nation’s economic and social outcomes. It was originally published in July.

Charles North, associate professor of economics at Baylor and coauthor of the paper, concluded that religions, especially faiths with a strong conception of morality, produce a society that is more lawful and less corrupt.

Corruption levels and respect for the rule of law are critical issues “because they help determine whether a government will stagnate or grow,” North said during a recent lecture at Campbell University’s Lundy-Fetterman School of Business. He added that countries “are more productive and have a higher level of economic development if they abide by the rule of law and take care of public corruption.”

Respect for the rule of law creates better societal institutions, which in turn mitigate macroeconomic shocks, North said. A well-functioning economy also “requires clearly defined property rights” so that legitimate bargaining can occur.

The rule of law also helps economies grow by fostering impersonal exchange, he said. In order to grow, an economy must allow its agents to engage in specialization and then grant the freedom to trade in order to gain the benefits that are the hallmark of developed countries, North said. Establishing respect for the rule of law will also help alleviate poverty in developing nations, he said.

North explained the role religion plays in fostering economic vitality, concluding “that religion is statistically correlated to economic growth.” He referenced Max Weber’s seminal work on the connection between religion and the economy, entitled The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which concluded that the Protestant work ethic was central to the conception of the spirit of capitalism.

But North argued that Weber’s premise has been refuted theologically and empirically in recent years. “Many early Protestants were strongly anti-greed in their teachings,” he said. “They did not teach that you could be saved through wealth.” Additionally, North pointed out that many capitalistic institutions were already in place when the Protestant Reformation jumped onto the world stage in 1517.

At the same time, North referred to contemporary research that has found a causal relationship between economic success and religion. For example, a research paper published by Harvard University in 2003 and authored by Robert Barro and Rachel McCleary found that economic growth is augmented by strong religious belief, especially in heaven and hell. Another study published by Rodney Stark in the Journal for Scientific Study of Religion concluded that only religions with a strong conception of God or the gods — such as Protestantism, Catholicism, or Hinduism — are able to sustain a moral order, which in turn fosters economic stability.

In addition to tracing the relationship between religion and economic and social strength, North’s study compares changes in the most predominant world religions over a 100-year period. From 1900 to 2000, there was a 2.9 and 8.7 percent increase in the number of majority Protestant and Catholic countries, respectively, while Islam saw a boost of 3.9 percent.

North concluded that a nation’s religious heritage matters in creating positive economic and social results, but that the positive effect is visible over the course of centuries rather than decades.

“There is a direct affect on behavior,” North said. “Religious people comply with the law and moral codes. But there are other indirect effects, such as greater demand for moral enforcement by the government and cheaper law enforcement. A majority of those who subscribe to a morally strong religion will demand that the government reflect that.”

David N. Bass is an editorial intern of Carolina Journal.

RALEIGH — Situated near the intersection of two country roads in Harnett County, Holly Gardner’s one-story ranch home and surrounding farmland could easily be described as the perfect rural setting.

The idyllic pastureland has been in the Gardner family for four generations, going back to parents who donated a one-room schoolhouse to the nearby town of Angier and grandparents who bought lights so the community could play baseball at night.

But in this quiet country setting, Gardner, a recently widowed mother-of-two, has found herself the victim of a local zoning ordinance imposed by Angier that is preventing her from selling a portion of her land for residential development.

Until recently, the farm was devoted to tobacco, corn, wheat, and soybeans. But in a state economy quickly out-growing its agricultural roots, Holly Gardner and her husband of 24 years, Eddie, decided earlier this year that a new direction was necessary. In an effort to reduce mounting farm debt, the family initiated plans to sell a four-acre plot of farmland for housing construction. But the situation turned sour when Eddie was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given only a short time to live.

“[My husband] was just trying to figure out a way to help with some of the farm expenses that have been accrued since the tobacco program was phased out,” Gardner said. “That’s about the same time that he was diagnosed with cancer, so he put it on the fast-track to get the project done while he had time.”

Gardner and her brother-in-law, Ben, hired a surveyor to mark off a small section of land on the southern end of the farm for development. But to Gardner’s surprise, the powers that be in Angier threw up a roadblock — extraterritorial jurisdiction, a law which allows municipalities to exert control beyond the city limits.

The requirements put forth by the Town of Angier Planning Board were simple — redraw the proposed development lines to include sidewalks, curbs, and gutters. Living well outside the Angier city limits, Gardner was upset to learn that the town could impose restrictions that would make construction costs too high to consider. But under ETJ law, they could.

Fighting for a variance

State statute § 160A-360 governs a municipality’s use of ETJ. The law stipulates that a city, depending on its population, may use the ETJ power up to three miles from its border. The statute also requires municipalities to notify all landowners within the proposed extension and to inform them of their “right to participate in a public hearing” prior to approval of the ordinance.

A study conducted by the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Government found that 62 percent of local governments take advantage of the ETJ provision. Dr. David Owens, UNC-CH professor of public law and government, concluded in a January 2006 research paper that while ETJ rules occasionally trigger controversy, policies are routinely used without public outcry.

But to Gardner, who faced the hurdle of obtaining a zoning variance shortly after losing her husband to cancer, the reality of ETJ powers was not an academic matter but a brute reality.

Gardner and her brother-in-law countered the ETJ requirements by petitioning Angier for a variance, citing the cost-prohibitive nature and environmental risks the board’s demands would entail. City Planner Travis Morehead issued a memorandum dated Sept. 6 recommending that the board deny the request.

“The staff has not reviewed any information that leads to the conclusion that there are extraordinary and exceptional conditions pertaining to the parcel in question,” Morehead wrote. “There are no special circumstances, which result in this parcel warranting a variance. Economic factors are not considered to be special circumstances.”

On Sept. 12, Gardner made her appeal before the Angier Planning Board, but board members unanimously voted to turn down the variance, according to The Angier Independent.

Financial feasibility

Including amenities such as curbs and sidewalks can range in cost anywhere from $7,000 per lot to as much as $17,000 per lot, making the entire construction project cost- prohibitive, said Donald Gregory, Gardner’s general contractor.

“It seems like the town of Angier is pushing everything away,” Gregory said. “I could name you several subdivisions that have not come [to Angier] simply because of the massive amount of money that it’s going to cost to put them together.”

Michael Sanera, research director and local government analyst for the John Locke Foundation, said that including curbs and sidewalks would drive up costs and make competition with nearby neighborhoods more difficult. “Houses constructed outside the ETJ and in Harnett County will not be required to have curbs and sidewalks,” he said. “Thus, the same house a short distance outside the ETJ will have a price tag significantly less than those inside. Which house will sell? Angier is imposing costs that others do not have to pay.”

The requirements for curb, gutter, and sidewalk were originally drafted into Angier’s subdivision ordinance in August 2002, according to Morehead. “Curbs, gutter, and sidewalks are fairly indicative of urban development,” he said. “Sidewalks facilitate safe pedestrian traffic into and out [of] areas, whether those areas are in residential or non-residential districts.”

The ETJ standards also add to the aesthetic appeal of potential subdivisions, Morehead said, although the policy was not implemented to attract upper-income residents. “Curb, gutter, and sidewalks are not a socio-economic issue,” he said. “These developmental standards are not unique to Angier, but in fact…are very common to other local municipalities in the Triangle area. Having development standards helps ensure that the quality of life of the town’s current and future residents are [sic] maintained and perhaps improved upon.”

But Gardner sees irony in the requirements given the rural nature of her farm’s setting. “You can imagine a development with two sidewalks — one on each side of the drive—out in the middle of the country,” she said. “And they can’t even put sidewalks in the town of Angier hardly unless a federal grant is written.”

Ben Gardner put it even more bluntly. “Angier wants to be like Holly Springs or Cary,” he said.

Future development

Given the regulatory roadblocks, Gardner said that she is not planning to move forward with development plans for a while. Last summer, the family leased out the farmland to cultivate sod, which is helping to pay some of the bills. But Gardner still considers Angier a prime region for growth with its centralized location between Raleigh and Fayetteville — if only the town would be flexible.

David N. Bass is an editorial intern for Carolina Journal.