Abortion in North Carolina
As of July 1, 2023, abortion in North Carolina is currently legal during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Abortion related legislation existed in North Carolina by 1900, which included a therapeutic exception. National research carried out in 1967 included North Carolina data to derive estimates related to abortion procedures. State Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws were in place by 2013. North Carolina abortion laws have been before the federal judiciary, including in March 2019 when U.S. District Judge William Osteen formally struck down North Carolina's life of the mother only 20-week abortion ban. The number of abortion-providing facilities in North Carolina, including freestanding abortion clinics, has declined over the years, with: 114 facilities providing abortions in 1982, 86 facilities providing abortions in 1992, 27 facilities providing abortions in 2014 (16 of which were freestanding abortion clinics), and 26 facilities providing abortions in 2017 (14 of which were freestanding clinics). The total number of abortions in the state have generally declined over time, with a 36% decrease from 1980 to 2013. There is an abortion rights activist community in the state, with women participating in the #YouKnowMe movement, and in the #StoptheBans movement in May 2019. There is also an anti-abortion rights movement in the state. In 2017, Lindsay Beyerstein and Martyna Starosta directed Care in Chaos, a short documentary that centered around the experiences of an abortion clinic director dealing with daily anti-abortion protesting outside of an abortion clinic in Charlotte, North Carolina. This documentary won the category of "best documentary short" at the Nevada International Film Festival. History In 1967, a group of North Carolina-based researchers published estimates for the number of abortions performed in the United States; using data from North Carolina, they estimated that 699,000 induced abortions had been performed in 1955 and that the annual number had risen to 829,000 in 1967. Thousands of women came from out of state in 2015 to get abortions in North Carolina and Georgia. 14.5% of all abortions in Georgia that year were for out-of-state residents, while 7.5% of all abortions performed in North Carolina were performed for out-of-state residents. This contrasted to neighboring South Carolina, where only 5.9% of abortions performed in the state involved out-of-state residents. Legislative history By the end of the 1800s, all states in the Union except Louisiana had therapeutic exceptions in their legislative bans on abortions. In the 19th century, bans by state legislatures on abortion were about protecting the life of the mother given the number of deaths caused by abortions; state governments saw themselves as looking out for the lives of their citizens. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, New Mexico, North Carolina and Oregon made reforms to their abortion laws, with most of these states providing more detailed medical guidance on when therapeutic abortions could be performed. In 2013, state Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) law applied to medication induced abortions in addition to abortion clinics. Nebraska and North Carolina had laws