North Carolina Republicans are playing with fire on abortion, attempting to restrict the procedure despite voter sentiment there and despite the growing salience of abortion rights as an issue. That North Carolina Republicans are following the path of other much redder Southern states in restricting these rights is an indication of just how committed they are. That they’re doing it in the face of horror stories of women suffering due to new laws is proof that there’s nothing “pro-life” about the GOP.
The Republican-controlled Legislature isn’t going full-on forced birth. Instead, lawmakers are proposing to restrict abortion to the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. They at least recognized that banning abortion is unpopular with voters in the state; Civiqs polling shows that 56% of the state’s voters want abortion to be legal in all or most cases. Forced-birth advocates had been pushing for a six-week ban and the 12-week ban was a compromise they have the gall to call “pro-woman” because it allows for exceptions in cases of rape, incest, and when the health of the mother is at stake. They were being extra generous in allowing the procedure for lethal fetal anomalies through 24 weeks.
All of which is demonstrably unnecessary, because 93% of abortions occur in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, according to the CDC. A vanishingly small number occur at more than 20 weeks, mostly because of serious pregnancy complications. The ban being proposed by North Carolina Republicans won’t make a demonstrable difference, except in making the statement that they believe women’s rights should be curtailed. A more nefarious purpose that can’t be ruled out is that they are doing it to sow confusion and prevent more people, in and out of the state, from seeking abortions.
Current state law allows abortion up to 20 weeks of pregnancy, and North Carolina has become a haven for women in surrounding states where the procedure has been banned. In the months surrounding the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health that ended federal abortion protections, the state saw a 37% increase in the abortion rate, the highest in the nation.
None of this is really about being “pro-life.” It’s not about reducing the number of abortions. That’s already happened; the abortion rate in the U.S. has been falling steadily for decades.
That’s because, as a new analysis has found, “It’s becoming less common for women to get pregnant when they don’t want to be.” The New York Times reported on the study originally published in the journal Demography, looking at abortion rates between 2009 and 2015. The study showed that an increasing majority of people were choosing to get pregnant and choosing the timing of their pregnancies.
Simply put, we’re not having an abortion crisis that demands these restrictions. If passed, the North Carolina law isn’t going to fundamentally change how abortion happens in that state. From a supposedly “pro-life” perspective, it’s absolutely unnecessary. This isn’t about saving unborn lives: It’s about controlling women’s bodies.
That’s the kind of freedom that Republicans don’t want women to have. Incidentally, the laws don’t just impact women: Plenty of male autonomy is being curtailed too. When to grow a family is an economic decision, one now being forced on men as well as women. The difference is that men get to keep control of their own bodies.
Dimitri of WarTranslated has been doing the essential work of translating hours of Russian and Ukrainian video and audio during the invasion of Ukraine. He joins Markos and Kerry from London to talk about how he began this work by sifting through various sources. He is one of the only people translating information for English-speaking audiences. Dimitri’s followed the war since the beginning and has watched the evolution of the language and dispatches as the war has progressed.