{"id":10979,"date":"2023-06-18T17:58:52","date_gmt":"2023-06-18T17:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=10979"},"modified":"2023-06-18T17:58:52","modified_gmt":"2023-06-18T17:58:52","slug":"what-north-carolinas-abortion-ban-does-and-why-it-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=10979","title":{"rendered":"What North Carolina\u2019s abortion ban does \u2014 and why it matters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“The actual policy mechanisms in the bill are more subtle than you might think. Most abortions \u2014 at least 88 percent in North Carolina<\/a> \u2014 take place at or before 12 weeks. To reduce abortions during the period when it remains legal, the bill contains new in-person visit requirements for patients and onerous licensing restrictions on surgical clinics. These likely wouldn\u2019t have the same effect as a full ban but would still make it harder for patients (especially out-of-staters) to access care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

North Carolina Republicans chose this more subtle pathway deliberately: Reporting from the Washington Post<\/a> shows that the legislative drafting process was shaped by the widespread evidence that strict abortion bans are a political loser for the GOP<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bill even includes some limited financial support for parents, like paid parental leave for state employees and teachers, to defang the popular Democratic argument that Republicans don\u2019t actually care about the welfare of mothers and their children<\/a>. It\u2019s a state abortion restriction seemingly designed to counter the post-Dobbs<\/em> backlash \u2014 one that could serve as a model for Republicans elsewhere looking to retreat from more hardline positions if it proves politically effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether the bill actually works as intended, on both policy and political grounds, it has potentially massive stakes for the entire country.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The new North Carolina law restricts elective abortion through 12 weeks (the first trimester). After that, abortion is prohibited with narrow exceptions: rape and incest through 20 weeks, life-threatening fetal anomalies through 24 weeks, and life of the mother throughout (a notoriously murky exception<\/a>).”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“the new lawimposes a new requirement that abortion clinics maintain facilities on par with those of ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), which are non-hospital outpatient surgery clinics. ASCs are required to adhere to specific rules, including physical layout restrictions<\/a>, that abortion clinics don\u2019t always meet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no evidence that these restrictions improve outcomes in patients who have abortions; a study of 50,000 abortions found no difference between those performed in ASCs and those performed outside of them<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ASC rule is the most common restriction<\/a> found in so-called TRAP laws \u2014 short for \u201ctargeted regulation on abortion providers.\u201d The idea behind TRAP legislation is to impose financially burdensome requirements on abortion clinics that all but force many of them to shut down. Research by the Guttmacher Institute<\/a> found that TRAP laws in four states \u2014 Arizona, Kentucky, Ohio, and Texas \u2014 caused roughly half of all clinics in those states to shut down between 2011 and 2017. And Planned Parenthood has already said that none of its existing clinics in North Carolina<\/a> meet the state\u2019s ASC standards.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“strengthens<\/a> an existing North Carolina law that prohibits patients from using abortion-inducing drugs like mifepristone at home or elsewhere absent a physician\u2019s supervision. Providing abortion drugs directly to a patient carries a $5,000 fine<\/a>, as does advertising the sale of any such drugs.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy\/2023\/5\/16\/23725346\/north-carolina-abortion-ban-republicans-roy-cooper<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The actual policy mechanisms in the bill are more subtle than you might think. Most abortions \u2014 at least 88 percent in North Carolina \u2014 take place at or before 12 weeks. To reduce abortions during the period when it remains legal, the bill contains new in-person visit requirements for patients and onerous licensing restrictions on surgical clinics. These likely wouldn\u2019t have the same effect as a full ban but would still make it harder for patients (especially out-of-staters) to access care.
\nNorth Carolina Republicans chose this more subtle pathway deliberately: Reporting from the Washington Post shows that the legislative drafting process was shaped by the widespread evidence that strict abortion bans are a political loser for the GOP.<\/p>\n

The bill even includes some limited financial support for parents, like paid parental leave for state employees and teachers, to defang the popular Democratic argument that Republicans don\u2019t actually care about the welfare of mothers and their children. It\u2019s a state abortion restriction seemingly designed to counter the post-Dobbs backlash \u2014 one that could serve as a model for Republicans elsewhere looking to retreat from more hardline positions if it proves politically effective.<\/p>\n

Whether the bill actually works as intended, on both policy and political grounds, it has potentially massive stakes for the entire country.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“The new North Carolina law restricts elective abortion through 12 weeks (the first trimester). After that, abortion is prohibited with narrow exceptions: rape and incest through 20 weeks, life-threatening fetal anomalies through 24 weeks, and life of the mother throughout (a notoriously murky exception).”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“the new law imposes a new requirement that abortion clinics maintain facilities on par with those of ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), which are non-hospital outpatient surgery clinics. ASCs are required to adhere to specific rules, including physical layout restrictions, that abortion clinics don\u2019t always meet.<\/p>\n

There is no evidence that these restrictions improve outcomes in patients who have abortions; a study of 50,000 abortions found no difference between those performed in ASCs and those performed outside of them.<\/p>\n

The ASC rule is the most common restriction found in so-called TRAP laws \u2014 short for \u201ctargeted regulation on abortion providers.\u201d The idea behind TRAP legislation is to impose financially burdensome requirements on abortion clinics that all but force many of them to shut down. Research by the Guttmacher Institute found that TRAP laws in four states \u2014 Arizona, Kentucky, Ohio, and Texas \u2014 caused roughly half of all clinics in those states to shut down between 2011 and 2017. And Planned Parenthood has already said that none of its existing clinics in North Carolina meet the state\u2019s ASC standards.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“strengthens an existing North Carolina law that prohibits patients from using abortion-inducing drugs like mifepristone at home or elsewhere absent a physician\u2019s supervision. Providing abortion drugs directly to a patient carries a $5,000 fine, as does advertising the sale of any such drugs.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[521,321,800,1289],"class_list":["post-10979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-abortion","tag-ban","tag-bans","tag-north-carolina"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10979"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10980,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10979\/revisions\/10980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}