RALEIGH, N.C. — Demonstrations are planned in downtown Raleigh this weekend as Gov. Roy Cooper has plans to veto a bill on Saturday that would ban most abortions after 12 weeks in North Carolina.

Republican leaders in the General Assembly say they’re confident they can override the veto.

One Raleigh mother says she’s deeply concerned about the future of women’s rights in North Carolina.

Lyric Thompson is the vice chair of the North Carolina Council for Women. She’s also a mom, but it was a tough journey to get there.

“Helen's 19 months old and getting in touch with her voice. She loves flowers. There's so many beautiful flowers during spring here, so she's been gathering tiny bouquets and putting them all over the house,” Thompson said.

The joy she has talking about her daughter now, you might not know what it took for Thompson and her husband to start a family.

“Longer than anticipated. Certainly scarier than anticipated. She took about five years with two pregnancies that didn't work out along the way,” Thompson said.

Thompson has fibroids. Her first pregnancy lasted 13 weeks and her second lasted 20 weeks. In both cases, she had miscarriages that then caused the life-threatening complications. She says her life was at risk so her doctors performed a type of surgical abortion.

“There were so many things we were worrying about and both of those incredibly traumatic and sad experiences. But it was never that I wouldn't get the care that I needed,” Thompson said.

New legislation in North Carolina could restrict abortions after 12 weeks with exceptions for rape and incest, the life of the mother and life-limiting fetal abnormalities.

One group planning a protest Saturday against Cooper's planned veto says the bill's 12-week restriction is a "minimum" that won't protect unborn infants. 

“This veto proves Governor Cooper and North Carolina Democrats really want late-term abortions,” Dustin Curtis of Students for Life Action stated in a news release Friday.  

The measure would also require women see a doctor three separate times to get an abortion, which Thompson says amounts to restriction of access.

“If you are imposing multiple wait times and visits for women who are seeking services, then you're similarly winding out the clock and making it less likely she is going to be able to access care if she can even take the time off work, travel, et cetera,” Thompson said. “So this is actually a very clever and well-disguised effort to tackle abortion access on both the supply and the demand side and market. It’s not something that is common sense or some sort of middle ground. You have to read the fine print, unfortunately, and most people do not. But the devil's in the details very much on this bill.”

Thompson believes this change would be the first step toward a complete abortion ban.

“The United States has a higher maternal mortality rate than any other developed nation, and it's particularly bad for Black women and Hispanic women and communities in rural areas,” Thompson said.

“In my experience as a policy analyst and an advocate on women's rights issues, there is always a chill effect ... when there's a gray area, when the law is not clear. And we are seeing over time the trend toward criminalization of doctors, criminalization of women,” Thompson said. “I truly don't know how we got here.”

She says this could jeopardize not only her future but that of other women, including her daughter.

“This is moving exceedingly fast in terms of our legislative process or lack thereof. But it's going to be exceedingly hard and long work to undo the effects. And I think that is something that no one has yet grasped,” Thompson said. “But mostly I'm sad that I have a daughter who is going to grow up with less rights than her mother and her grandmother, which seems profoundly un-American. I am devastated to think about women who don't have access to alternatives.”

She says by sharing her story, it may empower other women with similar stories to share theirs and in turn offer that perspective to others.

"Our interests seem to be very much not being prioritized and are being actively undermined by leaders who may also not have heard these stories. So all we can do is try to tell them more and hope that in reliving our trauma, our leaders make better choices because now they can't say they didn't know," Thompson said.

In the case of Thompson’s previous pregnancies, this new legislation would likely not have prevented her from getting the care she needed because it has exemptions for the life of the mother.

Currently in North Carolina, abortion is legal through 20 weeks of pregnancy. There’s also a 72-hour waiting period between a woman’s first doctor appointment and getting an abortion.

With the governor expected to veto the bill Saturday, the legislature could take it up again next week. If the House and Senate keep their supermajorities and override the veto, the new abortion law will go into effect July 1.

Editor's Note: This article was updated to clarify details of Lyric Thompson's medical history.