Abortion & Voters In Battleground North Carolina

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – “I’m here because I know that I can’t financially take care of another child because I already have one.” Soft-spoken and shy. 19 years old. She found a ride to Charlotte from South Carolina and scraped together the money she needed so she could get an abortion.
But she tells WCCB News @ Ten anchor Morgan Fogarty, “I don’t believe in abortion because I feel like every child should be able to live.”

She says women should have the right to choose, but that when she votes this November, she will vote for anti-abortion candidates. “Because I just feel like I don’t…I don’t like hurting kids. I’m sorry. I just really don’t don’t like women coming to the abortion clinic because I just feel like, why get pregnant?”

Amber Gavin is the Vice President of Advocacy and Operations at A Woman’s Choice in Charlotte. She says that the 19-year-old’s contradictory belief that abortion is okay for her, but not for others, is not uncommon to hear from pregnant people they serve. The clinic works to change that. “Their take home packages or aftercare packages, there’s information of how to register to vote,” says Gavin. Doctors at A Woman’s Choice also provide patients with information about North Carolina’s mandatory 72 hour waiting period. It’s the longest in the country. “They’ll say, if you don’t like it, we encourage you to get out and vote because your state legislators are the ones that made this happen,” says Gavin.

North Carolina was able to provide abortions until 20 weeks until 2023. Now, it can provide them up to 12 weeks. Gavin says, “Once all the states around us started either total or partial bans, we saw a huge influx of people.” Gavin says she isn’t sure abortion will motivate North Carolinians at the polls, but says abortion bans in other states will push her clinic’s out-of-state patients to the polls. She says, “I think (for) some people it is really motivating, especially for folks who’ve traveled from Florida.”

“A lot of North Carolinians really care about this issue…the issue is, is that the politicians tend to be more polarized than North Carolinians are,” explains Meredith College political science professor Whitney Ross Manzo. She says polls show North Carolina voters are in the middle when it comes to the state’s abortion ban after 12 weeks. “Most North Carolinians think that that’s okay. Half say they like it, half say they don’t,” she says. We will find out in November which half shows up at the polls.

According to a new report from the Society of Family Planning released in March 2024, North Carolina has seen 27% increase in abortions since July 2023. That’s when the state’s 12-week abortion ban went into effect.