One year since the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Vice President Kamala Harris plans to travel to Charlotte, North Carolina. The visit Saturday comes one week before North Carolina’s new 12-week abortion ban is set to go into effect.
The vice president is expected to focus on abortion rights in her speech and push for federal legislation to guarantee the right to an abortion.
“The consequences of these abortion bans and extreme laws have been heart-wrenching. Women’s lives have been put at risk, as care is denied because providers fear prosecution for doing their job,” the vice president said in April.
“Women have been turned away from emergency rooms and denied treatments and care that are essential to preserve their health and life,” she said.
June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court issued its 5-4 decision in the Dobbs case, overturning the constitutional right to an abortion that had been in place since 1973. The ruling left it up to the states to decide on access to abortion.
Since that decision, many states have banned or severely restricted abortion, especially in the South.
The Republican-controlled General Assembly passed a law in May banning most abortions in North Carolina after 12 weeks. The legislature voted to overturn the governor’s veto of the bill and the new law is expected to begin July 1.
Abortion in North Carolina had been legal through 20 weeks of pregnancy, making the state a destination in the southeast for women seeking the procedure.
North Carolina’s law bans almost all abortions after 12 weeks, with exceptions for rape and incest, “life limiting” fetal abnormalities and when the life of the mother is at risk.
GOP leaders in the General Assembly said the bill was a compromise by Republicans in the legislature
“This bill is mainstream and a common-sense approach to a very difficult topic,” Sen. Vicki Sawyer, a Republican representing Iredell and Mecklenburg counties, said last month before the Senate voted to override the governor’s veto.
A federal lawsuit filed June 16 seeks to stop the new law from going into effect in July. The lawsuit, filed by Planned Parenthood, argues the new abortion law is contradictory and unconstitutionally vague.
A federal judge in Greensboro will hold a hearing on the lawsuit Wednesday. In the meantime, Republicans in the General Assembly filed amendments to the law this week in response to the legal action.
The Biden administration has pledged to protect abortion rights.
“One year ago, the Supreme Court eliminated a constitutional right that it had previously recognized, overturning nearly 50 years of precedent. Today, more than 23 million women of reproductive age—one in three—live in one of the 18 states with an abortion ban currently in effect,” the administration said in a statement Friday.
“Despite this devastating impact on women’s health, Republican elected officials continue to advance these bans at both the state and national level,” the White House said.
President Joe Biden signed an executive order Friday intended to increase access to contraception, including over-the-counter contraception and making sure women on health insurance through the Affordable Care Act do not have to pay for birth control.