Ex-Dem Key in Revival of North Carolina Abortion Ban Defends Change in Reproductive Rights

party change North Carolina State Representative Tricia Cotham (R), who was instrumental in Override a veto of the state’s 12-week abortion ban On Tuesday night, she defended her decision to uphold the ban despite having been an outspoken supporter of reproductive rights.

“Some have called me a hypocrite since I voted for this bill,” Cotham said. in a long statement on Tuesday night, ridiculing “extremists on both sides of the abortion struggle.”

Cotham, who changed party last month, giving the North Carolina Republican Party the supermajority it needed to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes, described the state’s ban on abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy as “strikes a reasonable balance ” and “represents a middle ground”. This ban, he claimed, would still allow the procedure in “the time period when most abortions occur.”

But Cotham’s characterization ignores the current reality of America’s abortion landscape. Since the US Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last year, gaining access to the procedure has become a logistical nightmare for many patients. Depending on where they live, people seeking an abortion may need to travel to multiple states for care, flooding clinics in states where abortion remains legal.

North Carolina, which will continue to allow abortions up to 20 weeks until the new ban takes effect July 1, has seen a 37% increase in abortions since Roe’s fall, the highest percentage increase in any state since the Supreme Court ruling last June.

That creates longer wait times to see providers, sometimes for several weeks, meaning patients may need to realize their pregnancy and decide how to proceed, much sooner than Cotham and his colleagues have hinted. republicans.

The bill also requires patients to have an in-person consultation with their provider 72 hours before the abortion, a process that, in North Carolina, is currently allowed to be done over the phone. The bill also requires patients undergoing medical abortion to attend a follow-up visit. Both provisions would take up available appointment times at clinics, likely further extending wait times.

Cotham, who spoke about your own medically necessary abortion on the House floor in 2015, he praised the 12-week ban in his statement as “providing crucial exceptions for rape, incest, serious fetal anomalies, and to protect the life of the mother.” The bill, she claimed, “affirms the life-saving care” she received when she underwent a doctor-recommended abortion to protect both her life and her fertility during an ectopic pregnancy.

“It was very important to me that this legislation protect all women who experience a miscarriage or other complications, and it certainly does,” she said.

But such “life-saving” exceptions don’t apply so easily. In some cases, it simply means that hospitals, wary of lawsuits, wait until the patient is near death before helping to terminate the pregnancy.

In March, five women denied vital abortions in Texas filed a lawsuit against the state, saying its six-week abortion ban forced its health care providers to delay care until the last possible moment. Although four of the plaintiffs ultimately decided to travel out of state for treatment, one of them was told it was not safe to travel. It wasn’t until the pregnancy caused her to go into septic shock, a life-threatening bloodstream reaction to an infection, that her providers felt they were free, legally, to proceed with an abortion.

When speaking to colleagues in 2015, Cotham seemed to understand the nuances of the abortion issue and the problems with government intervention.

“This decision depended on me, my husband, my doctor and my God. I was not depending on any of you in this chamber,” he said at the time.

And as recently as four months ago, she cosponsored a bill to codify abortion protections in North Carolina.

Cotham walked away from a reporter Wednesday afternoon when he pressed her about those inconsistencies.

“However, one question many people have is how do you reconcile voting with your past public statements in support of abortion rights?” WNCN reporter Michael Hyland asked him.

Cotham asked him to stop questioning him and referred him to his statement.

A few months after winning re-election to his current term at the end of 2022, Cotham renounced his Democratic affiliations and joined the North Carolina Republican Party ― give the party a large, powerful majority in the state House and pave the way for Republicans to override the vetoes of the Democratic state governor. He claimed that he made the switch due to intimidation from his fellow Democrats.

Immediately, questions arose about how the Cotham change would affect abortion access in the state. But at a press conference in April announcing his new affiliation, he more or less said he didn’t want to talk about abortion.

“I think that women are much more,” she said then. “We are business owners. We help create economies. We form families. We carry it all. And to always be tied only to that tragic and difficult issue is wrong.”

she later he told local outlet WBTV that she supports banning abortion at around six weeks of pregnancy, but that there was a “consensus” among North Carolinians in support of a 12-week ban.

However, a survey conducted by Carolina Forward/Change Research earlier this month found that more than a half of likely voters strongly or somewhat opposed the 12-week ban.