Global Courant 2023-05-20 16:00:00
As lawmakers in North and South Carolina work to impose new restrictions on abortion, the options for women seeking to terminate a pregnancy in the South are rapidly dwindling.
North Carolina will ban abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy on July 1. Gov. Roy Cooper had vetoed the legislation, but the state’s Republican-led Assembly voted Tuesday to override that veto.
Also on Tuesday, the South Carolina House of Representatives passed a six-week abortion ban, which will now be presented to the Senate. And last month, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill that would ban most abortions after six weeks. The law will take effect if the Florida Supreme Court upholds its current 15-week ban in an ongoing legal battle.
“We will see many people forced to continue their pregnancies against their will,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, the founder and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, which operates two abortion clinics in Virginia, along with clinics in Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota. and New Mexico.
Miller said she was bracing for more women seeking abortions to travel to Virginia, which will likely soon be the last southern state without abortion restrictions.
The North Carolina ban makes exceptions for rape, incest, and “life-limiting” fetal abnormalities. Proponents of the legislation argue that it offers a compromise on abortion.
“The things in this bill are not obstacles to abortion. They are precautions. We are trying to balance the protection of unborn babies with the safe care of mothers,” North Carolina House Speaker Pro Tem Sarah Stevens said in word remarks Tuesday night.
Even before North Carolina’s 12-week ban was up, Miller said her Virginia clinics were seeing patients from all over the South. Since January, her call center has received more than 6,000 calls from out-of-state people seeking care in Virginia, she said.
Not all of those people make it to her clinics: Miller said that every day a patient cancels an appointment, often after multiple attempts to reschedule, due to factors that prevent the patient from traveling, such as a child getting sick or a trip that falls Through.
“They tell us, ‘It’s just getting easier for me to have a baby. I can’t figure out how to get there,'” she said.
The time it takes to schedule an appointment and arrange travel also causes some patients to delay abortions until the second trimester (on average, women don’t learn they are pregnant until after). between five and six weeks of pregnancy). In many cases, that will entail a surgical abortion, as abortion pills are only approved for use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy.
North Carolina’s upcoming ban could exacerbate those problems, Miller said.
Amber Gavin, the vice president of advocacy and operations at A Woman’s Choice, which operates three abortion clinics in North Carolina, said her clinics already had wait times of about 10 days.
Gavin said those waiting times could get longer once the 12-week ban goes into effect — even if patient volume decreases — because the new law requires an in-person visit three days before an abortion and mandates that all abortions, even those with pills, be performed. executed. administered personally.
“It just adds more administrative burden to our doctors and medical staff than is necessary,” Gavin said.
She added that her North Carolina clinics regularly see patients from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas. Beginning July 1, the clinics will begin referring women who are more than 12 weeks pregnant to health care providers in Virginia, Maryland, Illinois and Washington, D.C., she said.
“It’s going to have devastating consequences for the entire South,” Gavin said.
One remaining option is The Brigid Alliance, a service that provides travel, food, lodging, child care and other logistical support to people seeking abortions in the US.
Clinics and providers can refer people to the service, which is funded by private donors. The group’s typical customer travels more than 2,000 miles round trip and has travel expenses of nearly $1,400.
“Many of our customers haven’t even left their county,” said Serra Sippel, the alliance’s interim director. “Many have never been on an airplane.”
In the long run, medical experts and political leaders also fear an exodus of doctors from states with abortion bans, which could limit access to both abortions and maternal health care in the broader South.
“The ban in North Carolina will harm patients and threaten physicians for providing essential care,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement. rack on Tuesday.
Dr. Catherine Kuhn, associate dean for graduate medical education at Duke University School of Medicine, said residents who are training in obstetrics, gynecology or family medicine will likely need to travel to other states after 12 weeks to learn how to administer abortions.
North Carolina could also struggle to attract new medical talent if the state is seen as hostile to reproductive health care, Kuhn added. A survey of medical students, published this week, found that nearly 60% said it was unlikely or very unlikely they would apply for a single residency program in a state with abortion restrictions.
“I’m concerned that, particularly in women’s health care and reproductive health care, we’re going to see a decline in requests and interest,” Kuhn said.
