North Carolina Republicans have secretly settled on an abortion deal to potentially strong-arm past the swing state's Democratic governor. A veto-proof majority is slated to ban abortion after 12 weeks, with exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother, while funding millions of dollars in expanded contraception, child care, paid parental leave for public employees, and infant and maternal healthcare.

In short, the Tar Heel State is trying out the European model, and it might just prove the perfect model for "purple" states.

NORTH CAROLINA PASSES 12-WEEK ABORTION BAN

The polling on the nation's opinion on abortion is fairly consistent, and it indicates that the majority of people feel extremely alienated from both Democrats defending women's right to execute their nine-month-in-utero children and Republican restrictions that voters believe result in preteens and rape victims carrying pregnancies to term. A consistent majority of people support legal abortion, but really only in the first trimester. Last year, Pew reported that only one-third of respondents believed that abortion should be broadly legal with no exceptions by 14 weeks of gestation, and Gallup found that while two-thirds of the country support legal first-trimester abortion, a majority oppose abortion after that 12-week mark. In 2021, an Associated Press poll broadly confirmed these findings: a majority supporting legal abortion in all or most cases for first-trimester pregnancies but only one-third supporting legal abortion for second-trimester pregnancies.

Crucially, a 12-week ban is much more actionable than a six-week ban, not primarily because of the number of abortions that happen between six and 12 weeks but rather how they happen. Medication abortions, which now comprise a slight majority of all abortions administered in the country, only work up until 10 weeks, with a minority of providers prescribing them up until ... you guessed it: 12 weeks of pregnancy. In short, a 12-week ban allows the state to begin to crack down on the worst abortion offenders, mainly in-person clinics likely to perform later-term abortions, while avoiding interfering with that politically near-sacrosanct relationship between a woman and her doctor. In practice, this also means that the state isn't stuck going to war with the Food and Drug Administration or regulating interstate commerce of abortion pills, which also have legitimate medical uses unrelated to terminating pregnancies.

North Carolina (R+3) is not South Dakota (R+20). It's not even Iowa (R+6). Considering the latter two have passed a total abortion ban and a six-week ban, respectively, it follows that a critical swing state with a much smaller pro-life margin, both in the legislature and in the electorate, cannot and must not force through a Pyrrhic victory that exchanges a short-term pro-life extreme for the long-term Democratic control.

Especially in the era of medication abortion facilitated by blue state networks, the war on abortion will go the same way as the war on drugs and the war on guns — that is, unless pro-lifers focus on both the supply and demand sides of abortion. On a federal level, Republicans like Sen. Joni Ernst (IA) have pushed for the FDA to make oral contraceptives over-the-counter nationwide, and the GOP's funding in the bill will further keep working moms in the workplace and help empower the most disadvantaged women with family planning before conception.

Ideally, the trajectory paved by North Carolina Republicans will ultimately eliminate abortion entirely, not only as it undermines in-person clinics and surgical abortions but also as it ameliorates the need for the procedure as a whole. And despite how Democrats fear-monger, the state's GOP has found the sweet spot of what is both workable and, almost as important, popular.

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