The 12-Week Lie

The reality of the GOP's 'commonsense' abortion bans

Republicans are nervous. Every poll since Roe was overturned shows rapidly increasing support for abortion rights—not just in blue states, but across the country. And every day, another story of a woman being denied care—forced to carry a doomed pregnancy, ending up in the ICU with sepsis—chips away at their ability to win elections.

The reality of abortion bans has done far more damage to the conservative agenda than Democrats ever could have. Americans were always pro-choice. Now they’re pro-choice, angry, and voting. 

That’s why lawmakers have pivoted from talking about “protecting life” to assuring voters that they’re simply seeking “commonsense” policies. Republicans believe that if they paint abortion as a problem of extremes—an issue where both sides need to give a little—pretending to seek a reasonable middle-ground might save them from voters’ ire. (That’s also why we’re hearing so much from the Right about later abortions and ‘born alive’ bills—they need to create an imaginary pro-choice extreme to counter the very real suffering their bans cause.) 

To be clear, I don’t believe it’s possible for Republicans to message their way out of this. Not when hospitals are shutting down maternity wards and OBGYNs are leaving anti-choice states en masse. Not when child rape victims and cancer patients are being forced to leave their home states for care. 

Still, we can’t let Republicans get away with calling their restrictions ‘reasonable’. Because while they feign moderation on cable television shows and in press releases, the actual legislation they’re proposing is as cruel and punitive as it’s always been. The only thing that’s changed is the messaging. 

North Carolina’s recently-passed ban is a perfect example: a nightmare presented as a “compromise.” To listen to state lawmakers tell it, the legislation is barely a restriction at all. Bill sponsor Sen. Joyce Krawiec says, “this is a pro-life plan, not an abortion ban.” (Let that sink for a moment: Republicans are so afraid of abortion rights’ popularity, they’re not even willing to call their bans ‘bans’ anymore.) 

The bill is, in fact, an abortion ban. And it’s as horrific as any other that came before it. 

Republicans tout the legislation as somehow progressive because, they claim, it permits abortions up until 12 weeks. But as the kids say, be fucking for real. The only thing this law does in the first weeks of a woman’s pregnancy is ensure that she will have to fight through as many humiliating and unnecessary steps as possible in order to maybe get the care Republicans say they’ve graciously ‘allowed’. 

To start, this is not a 12-week ban. Medication abortion—used in nearly 60% of abortions in North Carolina—is banned at 10 weeks. What’s more, obtaining medication abortion would require three in-person visits, even though the pills are safe to prescribe via tele-health. Surgical abortion would also require an in-person consultation at least three days before the procedure. 

These aren’t just delays; they’re obstacles specifically designed to prevent women who can’t take multiple days off work or travel to a clinic from getting abortions. It’s an attack on poor women and out-of-state patients. And that’s just the first round of barriers. 

Before being able to obtain an abortion, the law requires that women are told ending their pregnancy will put them at risk for “infection, hemorrhage, cervical tear or uterine perforation, danger to subsequent pregnancies, including the ability to carry a child to full term.” In truth, abortion is safer than getting a wisdom tooth removed; still women will be told that by having one they may be seriously injured or never have children in the future. 

The ban would also mandate that patients be lied to about the “adverse psychological effects” of abortion, even though every credible study on abortion and mental health shows that the overwhelming feeling women have after ending an unwanted pregnancy is relief. 

But it’s not enough to lie to women, Republicans also want to shame them. If a patient is having a medication abortion, for example, the law would force doctors to tell them that they “may see the remains of her unborn child.” (This is not true.) 

Doctors will also be mandated to give patients printed materials—crafted by the state, of course—that feature descriptions and “pictures or drawings” of fetal development. The fact that they specify these images can be drawings is significant. It allows the state to portray an embryo or fetus any way they see fit. (To see the reality of what early pregnancy looks like, click here.)

Women would also be required to have medically unnecessary ultrasounds, during which they’ll be forced to listen to the fetal ‘heartbeat’ and a doctor’s detailed description of the embryo or fetus. There is no medical reason for any of this—it’s purely meant to shame. 

Incredibly, North Carolina Republicans have included (intensely dismissive) language in the bill that anticipates this criticism: They write that nothing prevents a patient “from averting her eyes [or] refusing to hear the simultaneous explanation”—though it’s unclear how one can “refuse” to hear a doctor’s voice.

All of these onerous and humiliating hurdles assume that a woman will be able to find a clinic at all. The legislation changes licensing requirements to such an extreme degree that not one Planned Parenthood in North Carolina would be allowed to operate. 

All of this, and we still haven’t even gotten to abortions after 12 weeks. There, the legislation only gets more brutal.  

Republicans claim that they’ve included allowances for abortions in cases of fetal abnormalities, for example, but the requirement that the issue be “uniformly diagnosable” would exclude most conditions. When Utah tried to pass a trigger law with the same language, OBGYN Dr. Lori Gawsom pointed out that there are few abnormalities that would fit that description: “As with most things in medicine, there’s a lot of gray area and there’s a spectrum of outcomes.”

On the off chance that someone is approved for an abortion due to fetal abnormality, more horror awaits: Doctors are mandated to give women written and oral information about how some fetuses with “life-limiting anomalies have resulted in live births of infants with unpredictable and variable lengths of life.” In other words, the law forces doctors to tell patients that perhaps their babies will survive, even if only for a few minutes. 

This is what they call “moderate”? This is what we’re meant to believe is a bill that’s different from all of the other abortion bans?

There’s no better proof of the legislation’s familiar cruelty, though, than the matter-of-fact way Republicans anticipate and dismiss women’s inevitable desperation when forced to carry pregnancies against their wills: In the exception for medical emergencies, lawmakers write that “no condition shall be deemed a medical emergency if based on a claim or diagnosis that the woman will engage in conduct which would result in her death.” 

To put it plainly: They know this law will cause women to become suicidal, and they don’t care. Please pause and think about this—about what this anguish looks like in people’s real lives. Consider how hopeless a person has to be for a doctor to diagnose them as being at immediate risk of taking their own life. Are they eating or getting out of bed? Are they able to talk without sobbing? Can they even be safely left alone?

Now think about that despairing person begging for help and being denied, told that they’re not having a real medical emergency.* That’s what this bill would do. In contrast, here’s what Republicans say it will do: Sponsor Sen. Krawiec says the ban “will undoubtedly save lives and improve health outcomes for many pregnant women.”

This legislation, seeped in a cruel indifference to women’s rights and health, is what Republicans are calling a “reasonable, commonsense” ban. In fact, they’ve coordinated so heavily on that particular talking point that Krawiec called the bill “reasonable, commonsense legislation” on the same day that state Senate Majority Leader Phil Berger said it was “common sense, reasonable approach.”

They believe if they say it enough that voters will believe them—as do Republicans nationwide. They believe if they use these words enough times, if they focus on Democrats’ supposed extremism, that Americans will forget about the pain their abortion bans have caused, and could cause. We won’t let that happen.

Even if Americans wanted to ignore the consequences of abortion bans, it’s unlikely that they’d be able to. Every day that goes by, someone else is harmed by this legislation—not an imaginary scenario dreamed up by political strategists, but a real person who has friends and family who care about her. People who vote.

And that’s what terrifies Republicans most of all. The more time that passes, the less likely it is that a community will remain unscathed by these laws. The language that conservatives use won’t matter much when you have a friend or neighbor who nearly died because of an abortion ban. That’s when we’ll see what Americans think of these ‘reasonable’ laws.

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*In an extra dose of irony, while mental health conditions are not a reason for an abortion exception in this law, they are on the list of abortion ‘complications’ that a doctor must report to the state.