Gov. Cooper holds roundtable on abortion access in Wilmington
WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — In a roundtable hosted by Governor Roy Cooper at Cape Fear Community College, medical professionals and advocates for reproductive rights shared concerns about the restrictive abortion bill that passed the North Carolina House and Senate last week.
Ahead of the visit to New Hanover County, Cooper told CBS’s Face the Nation host Margaret Brannan on Sunday he planned to go into state lawmakers’ districts this week to hold education forums on the implications of the bill.
Last week, Cooper released a video pleading with voters to pressure four legislators to uphold his veto of Senate Bill 20, which would ban elective abortions at 12 weeks. Among the four mentioned were Senator Michael Lee and Representative Ted Davis.
Cooper was joined by representatives from Planned Parenthood, the North Carolina Council of Women, and the YWCA of the Lower Cape Fear. Representative Deb Butler and medical professionals were also members of the panel.
Senate Bill 20; also known as Care for Women, Children, and Families Act, would move the limit for elective abortions from 20 to 12 weeks, and any abortions after that must be performed in hospitals. It would also ban medication abortions after 10 weeks and require three in-person appointments days apart for anyone seeking a medication abortion.
“This does not make abortion any safer. It is not evidence-based,” OBGYN Dr. Kaitlin Warta said. “It is simply an intentional barrier to try to stop women from getting the care that they need.”
Panelists agreed it is evident the bill was written without consulting any medical professionals and the wording is too vague and difficult to understand.
“It’s hard for me to say anything about this bill is encouraging because it’s not,” OBGYN Dr. Chelsea Ward said. “It’s vague language, it’s restricting language. It dismisses every family in North Carolina.”
Governor Cooper says he hopes legislators will hear the concerns and fears these experts have before it’s too late.
“I think these legislators who have said that they care about women’s reproductive freedoms, that they have told their constituents that they want to protect that, that this legislation doesn’t do it,” Cooper said. “There’s still time to go to the Republican leadership and say let’s stop this.”
The governor is encouraging people to contact their legislators to ask them to sustain his veto which he plans to do on Saturday.
During his visit on Wednesday, Cooper continued to ask Senator Michael Lee and Representative Ted Davis to keep their promises to protect women’s rights. WWAY reached out to Lee and Davis for comment but did not hear back. Last week, Lee responded to Cooper’s comments in part by saying, “Roy Cooper deliberately lied about my position on abortion during the 2022 campaign and he’s lying now.”
