Abortion in North Carolina

Since the federal protections of Roe v. Wade were overturned in 2022, reproductive freedom now comes down to advocacy on the state level. The margins are razor-thin in the General Assembly, and anti-abortion legislators have already managed to pass bills restricting abortion. In June 2023, the General Assembly passed a bill banning most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy and adding a multitude of restrictions on abortion prior to 12 weeks. Most parts of the bill went into effect on July 1, 2023. According to the Guttmacher Institute, facility-based abortions declined by 31% in the month after these provisions started.

Abortion is a normal part of reproductive health care. No one should be forced to carry a pregnancy against their will. We are here to help, and we won’t back down.

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Since the 6 week ban went into effect in Florida, North Carolina is the last state in the southeast to allow abortion up to 12 weeks. This has resulted in a huge increase in out-of-state patients flocking to North Carolina, where our clinics are already overburdened and underfunded. In 2023, 15,910 people from other states traveled to North Carolina in 2023 to access abortion — making up about 35% of all the abortions performed in the state.

But North Carolina was already struggling to keep up. In 2023, North Carolina passed Senate Bill 20, which limited abortion to 12 weeks of pregnancy in most cases and added a host of debilitating new restrictions. This only compounded the existing legal restrictions, including a 72-hour waiting period (one of the longest in the country). Only nine of North Carolina’s 100 counties have abortion clinics.

The majority of patients receive some amount of funding to help cover their care; that’s always been the case and it’s what makes care possible for most people. Abortion bans — including forced waiting periods, gestational limits, and more — force people to travel for care, push people further into pregnancy, increase out-of-pocket costs, and take people away from their families and jobs.

While abortion funds saw an initial spike in donations after the fall of Roe, those funds have all but dried up. Many funds are running out of funds within hours or days of opening their hotlines for the entire month.

Abortion support organizations and volunteers are working tirelessly to ensure that everyone who wants an abortion is able to get one, but the truth is that many people are being turned away due to legal restrictions, lack of funds, or other barriers. Additionally, in states with abortion restrictions, people who are on probation or parole have an even harder time accessing abortion due to limitations on their ability to leave the state.

We know that the consequences for those who are forced to continue with unwanted pregnancies can be catastrophic.

According to the Turnaway Study, which compared the outcomes of women who received abortions to those who were turned away, those who continue with pregnancy experience worse rates of economic hardship, health complications, and intimate partner violence. Additionally, being denied an abortion can negatively impact the financial wellbeing and development of all children in the household. For the two thirds of people seeking abortion who already have at least one child, this can dramatically alter an entire family’s life trajectory.

We also know that women in states with abortion bans are nearly 3 times more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after giving birth. We’ve already seen this play out in the two years since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Across the country, people have suffered tremendous pain and medical complications because doctors were prevented from providing medically necessary care.

It shouldn’t be this way.

Abortion should be free, legal, and accessible to all. We should be able to get care in our own communities without having to scrape together the cost of abortion care, childcare, transportation, and more from under-resourced and over-worked community-run organizations.