North Carolina's Republican-led legislature passes 12-week abortion ban

Mary Wills Bode, a Democratic senator, called the bill "devastatingly cruel" and warned that women would be forced into seeking illegal abortions. "Limiting access to care will not stop abortions from happening," she said.

North Carolina's Republican-controlled legislature on Thursday passed a bill limiting most abortions to the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, a sharp drop from the state's current limit of 20 weeks' gestation. The state Senate approved the bill 29-20 along party lines, a day after the state House of Representatives passed it in a similar party-line vote.

The measure now heads to Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, who has vowed to veto it. But Republicans have a supermajority in both chambers, thanks to a formerly Democratic lawmaker who switched parties in April, and can override Cooper's veto if all Republicans support it. If the bill becomes law, it would hinder women who have been traveling to North Carolina for abortions from nearby conservative Southern states that banned or strictly limited the procedure after the U.S. Supreme Court last year overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling establishing federal abortion rights.

Democrats and abortion rights supporters slammed the bill's Republican backers for bringing it to a vote in the House less than 24 hours after introducing the measure late Tuesday, precluding the lengthier analysis and debate that would usually happen around such legislation. Mary Wills Bode, a Democratic senator, called the bill "devastatingly cruel" and warned that women would be forced into seeking illegal abortions.

"Limiting access to care will not stop abortions from happening," she said. "They will just stop safe abortions from happening. To be clear, limiting access to care will kill women in this state." Senator Jim Burgin, a Republican, said the bill would save the lives of unborn children.

"Having an abortion has to be probably the hardest thing physically and emotionally a woman can go through, and I pray that no one ever has to do that," he said. "But 100% of the babies die in abortion." Protesters in the Senate chamber chanted, "Abortion rights now!" after the vote, prompting the Senate president to order the gallery cleared.

Under the North Carolina proposal, elective abortions after the first trimester would be banned except in instances of rape, incest, life-limiting fetal anomalies and medical emergencies. If the bill becomes law, it would also require doctors to be present when abortion medication is administered, levying a $5,000 fine against anyone who mails abortion pills or holds a telemedicine appointment for an abortion that does not occur in the presence of a doctor.

Key to the North Carolina Republicans' veto-proof majority is former Democratic state Representative Tricia Cotham, who in April changed her party affiliation to Republican. Cotham voted on Wednesday for the 12-week abortion ban, a dramatic change in her stance from just one year ago, when she promised on Twitter to "continue my strong record of defending the right to choose."

Near-total abortion bans have taken effect in 14 states since the Supreme Court revoked federal abortion rights in June 2022, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights advocacy research group. Abortions in North Carolina rose by 37%, more than any other state, in the first two months after the ruling, according to a study by the Society of Family Planning, a nonprofit organization that promotes abortion rights and research.

In the six months after the ruling, there were 3,978 monthly abortions on average in North Carolina, up 788 from the average in the two months beforehand, the society said.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)