The North Carolina House of Representatives failed to overturn Governor Roy Cooper’s veto of an anti-abortion bill that would have required physicians to treat any newborn delivered during an abortion and grant the infant the same protections guaranteed to other patients. Known as a “born-alive” bill, this abortion ban would have made it illegal for healthcare professionals to not actively try to save the life of an infant born during an unsuccessful abortion procedure.
This bill was yet another measure being pushed through legislature at the state level in order to weaken federal abortion protections. Over the past few weeks, multiple states have successfully passed anti-abortion bills, dramatically chipping away at abortion rights in access in the Midwest and South. Just last week, Missouri’s last abortion provider was in danger of shutting down due to anti-abortion regulations that put the Planned Parenthood clinic’s license at risk of expiring without renewal. Planned Parenthood president Leana Wen said that “this will be the first time since 1974 that safe, legal abortion care will be inaccessible to people in an entire state. More than a million people [will be] in a situation we haven’t seen since Roe v. Wade.”
Throughout the South, abortion rights have been under attack this legislative session: Louisiana passed a bill in May that would allow Louisiana voters to decide whether or not to change the state’s constitution to further restrict abortion access at the ballot box this October. The next week, Louisiana’s governor signed another anti-abortion bill banning abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected. A similar fetal heartbeat bill passed just weeks earlier in Georgia, effectively banning abortion after six weeks. In Alabama, the most restrictive anti-abortion bill in the country was passed in early May, which bans abortion even in cases of rape and/or incest, unless the woman’s life is in danger, and makes performing an abortion a felony.
Media Resources: The New York Times, 6/5/2019
