Biden supporters, including women who miscarried, blast Trump on abortion at NC event

President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign this week has aggressively attacked Republicans and Donald Trump’s stance on abortion access. On Wednesday, the campaign brought its message to North Carolina.

Trump, the presumed GOP presidential nominee, on Monday appeared to support keeping the power to implement abortion laws with states during a video posted on his Truth Social site.

“The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land,” Trump said.

The former president on Wednesday told an Atlanta reporter he would not sign a federal abortion ban, incensing some GOP politicians who want more restrictions. Trump has previously touted his contributions to reversing Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that made abortion a constitutional right for decades.

But Biden supporters said during a roundtable in southern Durham that they expect to see further restrictions on abortions should Trump win.

The Democratic state lawmakers, physicians and two women who experienced life-threatening complications in other states contrasted this with Biden, who during his North Carolina stop in March said that he would like to see Roe v. Wade become “the law of the land.”

Post Roe experiences

The two women who experienced miscarriages, Amanda Zurawski and Kaitlyn Joshua, have been campaigning with Biden’s team for the past week. In Durham, they spoke about not being able to access critical reproductive health care and how other women could also lose it.

Zurawski, who lives in Texas, which has a ban on abortions at any stage of pregnancy, is featured in a one-minute Biden campaign ad that came out Monday. In that ad, Zurawski blames Trump for her near-death after suffering infections during pregnancy and being denied an abortion following a miscarriage.

She, along with 21 other women, have sued the State of Texas in a case being reviewed by the state’s Supreme Court.

On Wednesday Zurawski said that she had been undergoing fertility treatment for over a year. When she became pregnant, she and her husband “were thrilled to finally have a baby on the way.” But following serious complications affecting the pregnancy’s viability, she said she needed an abortion.

“But unfortunately this was post-Roe Texas,” and “so I was told to wait until I got so sick that my life was considered in danger,” she said, at the roundtable.

Joshua, who is from Louisiana, where abortions are not permitted except in limited scenarios, also said she was denied care after she started experiencing a miscarriage at 11 weeks of pregnancy. She said Wednesday she had to have the miscarriage at home as hospitals would not aid her.

“It took me weeks to pass my pregnancy at home by myself and I was absolutely terrified,” she said.

North Carolina laws and future

Following the fall of Roe v. Wade, two dozen states banned abortions and others implemented new restrictions. Most recently, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld an abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest, and a six-week abortion ban is set to kick start in Florida.

North Carolina implemented a new abortion law last year which restricts abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy. There are exceptions up to 20 weeks for rape and incest, up to 24 weeks for “life-limiting” fetal anomalies, and without limit if a physician determines that the mother’s life is in danger due to a medical emergency. The law also implemented new in-person appointment requirements for medication abortions.

Dr. Abby Schultz, an OB-GYN based in the Triangle, said post-Roe, she had been getting more patients traveling from all across the Southeast to get an abortion in North Carolina.

She also said some people within the state – including minors and people with limited income – came to her for abortion services after the 12-week mark and had to be denied care. They would often then attempt to go to other states, she said.

But, “If we have a national ban, they won’t even have a place to go,” Schultz said.

Shortly after the fall of Roe, the number of abortions performed in the state increased by 37% — the largest increase in any state. But after the 12-week abortion law took effect, the number of abortions performed in the state dropped by an estimated 30%, as previously reported by The News & Observer.

Asked by The N&O, if lawmakers expected to see further restrictions on abortions here, state Sen. Natalie Murdock from Durham, said this at the roundtable: “What I can say to voters is do not fall for this smokescreen. We can’t normalize, ‘oh a 12-week ban is in place.’”

“It’s not the truth. We know they want a complete ban. So I think you’ll see a lot of, ‘Oh, we’re good where we are.’ And we know it’s not true. They’re saying that to get through the election,” she said.

Murdock said she “definitely thinks six weeks would come next if we don’t do what we need to do this fall.”

Top House and Senate leaders in the general assembly, which is controlled by the GOP, have said that they don’t want to take up another abortion bill this year. House Speaker Tim Moore, who is running for Congress, said he doesn’t know what could happen in 2025.

“If there’s a conversation on that, it’ll happen next year after I’m no longer here,” he said, as previously reported by The N&O.

The Republican candidate for governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, has said he supports a ban on abortions after six weeks. His opponent, Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein, opposed new abortion restrictions in the law passed last year.