North Carolina is relatively cautious when it comes to hindering access to abortion, which means it’s unlikely NC will join other states’ rush to ban the procedure. But if Roe vs. Wade is overturned, a state push to ban abortion could come overnight, its success depending largely on the makeup of the legislature.
Supporters of abortion and other reproductive rights are thus alarmed by South Dakota’s ban on abortion except when necessary to save a woman’s life; it doesn’t even include exceptions for victims of rape or incest. “The person that violated the woman will now have paternal rights,” says Nancy Dollard of the Charlotte chapter of the National Organization for Women. “That’s horrifying.”
Dollard says she’s heard rumblings of boycotting South Dakota businesses, but she believes funneling money to abortion-rights groups is a better protest. NARAL and Planned Parenthood have reported strong increases in donations and membership requests since South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds signed the law March 6.
Melissa Reed, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina, didn’t have such specifics handy last week but said membership rolls have tripled in two years. And Paige Johnson, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina, said the number of calls and e-mails to that organization has surged.
Calls for comment from NC Right to Life were not returned by press time.
After signing the ban, Rounds positioned himself in his statement as a compassionate conservative. “If we are pro-life, we must recognize the need to take care of women who are faced with a difficult pregnancy,” he said. “Regardless of the circumstances surrounding the pregnancy, we cannot protect the innocent child unless we protect and care for the mother. We must help each mother to see the value of the gift that is a child, and nurture the mother for her own sake and for the sake of her child.”
Abortion rights supporters aren’t impressed. “Women don’t need the government to be their parent,” said Dollard. “A woman is perfectly capable of making these decisions on her own and not having them legislated to her.”
Johnson simply called the South Dakota decision a “bad law” that doesn’t help guarantee safe pregnancies or aid women in caring for children.
Reed noted that some abortion opponents also scorn measures that can prevent abortions. (In his statement, Rounds allowed that victims of rape or incest could take emergency contraception.) “We’re working so hard to increase access to sex education and birth control and emergency contraception — really effective tools for reducing the need for abortion — and our opponents are not supporting those strategies either,” Reed said.
South Dakota’s abortion ban is the most far-reaching attempt to restrict access since the Supreme Court nixed a Pennsylvania law banning the procedure. Court action is expected to stop the SD law from taking effect, but that hasn’t stopped legislators in other states from pushing similar bans or considering laws that would ban the procedure automatically if Roe were overturned. Most are Southern or Midwestern states: Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma and West Virginia, according to Planned Parenthood.
Although North Carolina legislators haven’t tried to ban the procedure, lawmakers introduce at least a dozen bills each session aimed at restricting abortion. The measures, usually unsuccessful, pale in comparison to proposals elsewhere:
• A state representative in Georgia for years has sponsored bills each legislative session to require women to obtain death warrants from a judge before having an abortion. The court would appoint a guardian to represent the interests of the fetus or embryo.
• A state delegate in Virginia in 2003 mailed his colleagues plastic fetus dolls with a note attached asking, “Would you kill this child?”
• Some South Carolina legislators tried to put a 6-foot statue on Statehouse grounds to honor “unborn children who have given their lives because of legal abortion.”
With the rightward shift brought by the confirmations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito to the high court, abortion rights advocates nationwide are worried Roe’s days may be numbered. A bare majority of current justices support Roe, but Justice John Paul Stevens, a reliable liberal, turns 86 next month. Some anti-abortion groups worry the SD ban has come too soon.
North Carolina isn’t likely to follow the lead of hard-core anti-abortion states, Johnson believes. She pointed out in 1967 the state became one of the first since the procedure was outlawed in the 19th century to make abortion legal in some cases. Nor does North Carolina require a waiting period, as 24 other states do. Democrats, who generally support abortion rights, currently control both houses of the NC General Assembly.
Still, some Republicans have said they would jump at the chance to ban the procedure if Roe v. Wade were overturned. “As soon as they hand it back over to state’s rights, I think we’d file legislation the next day,” Republican State Rep. Mark Hilton told the Winston-Salem Journal. “It’s just a matter of time, if we get a majority on the Supreme Court.”
This article appears in Mar 15-21, 2006.
