Editor's note: This article initially referred to campaign mailers as coming from Hill's campaign — it has been corrected to note they were paid for by the North Carolina Democratic Party without the involvement of Hill's campaign (Hill's campaign was responsible for the video discussed in this article).
The perennial abortion issue is both polarizing and nuanced, easier to campaign on in absolutes than in shades of gray.
It’s complicated: most Americans are in favor of some abortion restrictions — but also disagree with the Dobbs decision, in which the Supreme Court struck down the national right to abortion enshrined by Roe v. Wade. They’re also opposed to more extremely restrictive abortion bans passed in red states following that decision according to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll conducted last year.
Dig deeper into those poll results and there’s a considerable range of views, even for Democrats, where 12% believed that abortion should only be allowed in response to rape, incest, or a threat to the mother’s life — and 6% believed it should be banned completely. Overall, for Democrats, Republicans, and independents, a plurality of 25% believed abortion should be legal but limited to the first trimester.
Ads supporting Hill, including a video ad from Hill's campaign, paint Lee’s abortion policy, codified in 2023’s Senate Bill 20, as extreme. The bill bans abortions after the 12-week mark — roughly to the end of the first trimester — while prior law allowed abortions until 20 weeks. But, while the legislation Lee helped steer is unlikely to be popular with many Democrats and liberal-leaning unaffiliated voters, some of Hill and the state party's claims about it don’t hold up to scrutiny.
In particular, Hill claims, implausibly, that Lee helped pass a bill that would jail doctors and elsewhere blocked access to birth control.
The claim that Lee “would force [a rape victim who had become pregnant] to carry her attacker’s baby,” made in a mailer funded by the state Democratic party, is in many cases an exaggeration. It's possible to imagine rape victims missing the 20-week limit laid out under SB 20's rape exception — and that's certainly grounds for a more nuanced criticism. But the law is less onerous than in other states which have shorter time limits and require rape victims to report their assault to law enforcement (or states which simply have no rape exception at all).
Claims that SB 20 banned abortions “before many women know they’re pregnant” and could shut down clinics (due to new requirements) are more plausible.
Mailers supporting Hill also makes claims about what legislation Lee might help pass in the future if current Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson wins the gubernatorial race against Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein. These are speculative; while Robinson has vocally called for extremely restrictive abortion measures, the political calculus of the General Assembly would be complicated. It’s worth noting, after all, that with a supermajority — and thus the power to push through any abortion legislation they wanted — Republicans still opted for looser restrictions than other red states. Many who have discussed the issue on background credit Michael Lee with expending the political capital to shift the policy from a potential 6-week ban to a 12-week ban.
Hill’s campaign initially offered to explain some of these campaign allegations, but still hasn’t responded to questions asked before Labor Day.
Abortion in 2022 Cape Fear-area races
The last round of state elections came just months after the Dobbs decision was formally announced, and it played a major — but not decisive — role in Cape Fear area races. With a supermajority on the table, most suspected that Republican policymakers would try to tighten restrictions beyond the existing 20-week ban; a variety of competing plans emerged, including a more extreme six-week ban favored by House Speaker Tim Moore and a more moderate three-month ban supported at one point by Senate Leader Phil Berger.
That helped sharpen the role of abortion in defining the campaign agenda. For example, in New Hanover County three Democratic candidates, all women, ran under the hashtag #trustwomen: Amy Block DeLoach challenged incumbent representative Republican Ted Davis, Deb Butler defended her incumbent seat against Republican John Hinnant, and Marcia Morgan challenged incumbent Republican State Senator Michael Lee.
Asked about the issue at a candidates’ forum, DeLoach and Morgan both said they objected to any abortion restrictions, while Butler said she was satisfied with the current state law (although she advocated for enshrining Roe in federal law). Butler defeated her challenger by over six points, DeLoach and Morgan both lost closer races. It’s hard to say if their respective policy approaches made the difference — but it’s clear a liberal progressive abortion stance wasn’t enough to cinch a victory.
(Davis, it should be noted, said during that same 2022 forum that he would respect the current law; he was later intentionally absent during the initial vote for SB 20 but voted to help the Republican supermajority overturn Democratic Governor Roy Cooper’s veto. Facing criticism for reneging on his word, Davis offered the unconvincing explanation that he’d voted against Cooper’s veto, not for the tighter abortion restrictions.)
Lee, for his part, telegraphed his legislative plans in an opinion piece in StarNews. He wrote that he believed life begins at conception, but argued for a more moderate abortion ban at the end of 12 weeks — more restrictive than the laws on the books, but less restrictive than many red states that drafted ‘heartbeat’ bills. While Lee declined to discuss whatever negotiations took place in Raleigh, it seemed he lobbied hard for his more moderate approach — which makes sense as a candidate from purple New Hanover County, home to a plurality of unaffiliated voters, and ranked as one of the most flippable state senate districts in the state.
The resulting legislation, SB20, passed along partisan lines — and had its fair share of detractors, including the North Carolina Medical Society, the North Carolina Obstetrical and Gynecological Society, and the North Carolina Academy of Family Physicians.
In addition to the reduced time limit (from 20 to 12 weeks) critics noted several other aspects, like a requirement for two in-person visits for medication abortion — a potential roadblock for rural patients, in particular — and a mandated real-time ultrasound (a measure that the courts had blocked in the past). And while the bill allowed for abortions up to the 20th week in the case of rape or incest, some felt that was still too restrictive; national polling has shown 70% of all voters, including over half of Republicans, would support a law that allows abortion at any time in those exceptional cases.
The 2024 State Senate District 7 race
With the Republican supermajority at stake, North Carolina State Senate District 7 remains one of the most fiercely contested senate seats in the General Assembly, and campaigns for the district can be notoriously tough, costly, and dirty. Campaigns for Morgan and Lee collectively spent over $3 million in 2022. Some of that was spent on attack ads against Lee that triggered a defamation suit against Morgan’s campaign; in 2023 Morgan admitted that ads weren’t factual after the two reached a private settlement.
Earlier this summer, Lee’s campaign launched a series of attack ads targeting Hill’s record on transgender rights. The ads used hyperbolic language, oversimplifying the issue of ‘affirmative care’ for transgender children to exploit an issue that is both extremely divisive in theory and fairly rare and complex in practice.
Related: Attorneys for state senate candidates Hill and Lee spar over attack ads on transgender issues
Hill’s campaign threatened a defamation suit in response to the ads — in part because they referred to Hill, a pediatrician, as a “quack” — but after Lee’s campaign pushed back it doesn’t appear there has been any formal legal action. The campaign did not respond to a question about the issue.
Ads attack Lee’s abortion record
In a video ad and a slew of campaign mailers, Hill and the North Carolina Democratic Party have repeatedly attacked Lee as the driving force behind SB 20, calling the bill “dangerous” and “extreme.”
In a video ad entitled “Oath” Hill says that, "[Lee] cast the deciding vote for a dangerous ban that could jail doctors like me and deny women care."
In one section of the bill (90-21.88A), SB 20 provides for professional discipline for doctors who provide abortions that are now illegal. It’s not clear how the bill would send a doctor to jail (or, in more serious cases, prison). Specifically asked about this line in the “Oath” ad in late August, a spokesman for Hill promised an explanation — but never delivered one.
Absent any insight from Hill’s campaign, you could perhaps still argue that one way SB 20 could send a doctor to jail is a provision under the bill’s “penalties” clause that holds that anyone who kills a child born alive is guilty of murder. Clauses like these have been proposed around the country — and some conservatives, including former President Donald Trump, continue to falsely insist that Democrats support “post-birth abortion.”
Laws around “post-birth abortions” are a moral panic, at best — or partisan pandering, at worst. That’s because even late-term abortions are extremely uncommon, killing a newborn baby is already considered murder, and doctors are already ethically prohibited from the practice; while there are tragic situations where doctors can't save both the mother and the child — the “life of the mother” exception to some abortion laws — that doesn’t apply after a child is born. (Also, while Hill doesn’t mention the possibility in his ads, mothers are explicitly protected from prosecution under the “born alive” clause.)
Mailers supporting Hill also claim that Lee voted against protecting access to birth control, citing SB 20 and HB 190 — but the bills don’t appear to support that claim. In fact, SB 20 provides public funding for contraception (and HB 190 doesn’t appear to mention it). As of August 1 of this year, birth control became available over-the-counter in North Carolina.
A bill introduced by Senate Democrats this summer, SB 808, would cement protections for birth control access, and Lee does sit on the standing Rules and Operations of the Senate committee which is currently reviewing the bill — but that committee doesn’t appear to have taken any action, up or down, on the legislation.
Mailers from the Democratic Party note that Lee has said he believes life begins at conception, which is true. And that is a stance that’s been used to justify attempts at banning birth control. Although Hill's campaign didn't authorize the mailers, WHQR did ask about the claims they made — again, the campaign initially offered to weigh in but later didn't respond.
A slightly more complicated claim is an allegation in a mailer that Lee — by way of SB 20 — would “would force [a rape victim who had become pregnant] to carry her attacker’s baby.”
The bill provided a 20-week limit for abortions for victims impregnated during a sexual assault. This is on par with some of the later limits in states with rape exceptions; Iowa, Nebraska, and Georgia allow 22 weeks. North Carolina is one of the few states with a rape exception that does not require the victim to report the assault to law enforcement (or, in some cases, a public health agency). This reporting requirement has been criticized as a serious flaw in rape exceptions for creating a possible roadblock to abortion access for victims who mistrust the police, fear reprisal from their assailant, or have been dissuaded from discussing the issue because of the stigma around rape.
It’s possible to see how states where the rape exception has a very short window — like the six-week limit in Mississippi — or states where a police report is mandatory — within 45 days in Iowa, for example — could make it more difficult for a rape victim to get an abortion. “Forced to carry” the baby is hyperbole, especially in North Carolina with its more lenient requirements.
Still, it’s very plausible a rape victim — dealing with the trauma of an assault, the stigma of rape, fear of the assailant, and the ordinary bureaucracy of the healthcare system — could miss the deadline of 20 weeks (a seemingly arbitrary limit which varies significantly state to state). Again, a 2023 nationwide survey found the majority of people — even Republicans — would support a law that allowed abortions at any time during a pregnancy caused by rape.
Even without the fallout of a violent rape, there are still possible scenarios in which a woman becomes pregnant but doesn’t realize it until after the 12-week limit. There have been many studies (and meta-analyses) that put the average ‘pregnancy recognition’ around five weeks. Pregnancy recognition at 12 (or even 20) weeks is less common — but not statistically negligible. Will “many” North Carolina women learn of an unwanted pregnancy after the new deadline? That depends on how you define “many” — but it will certainly be more than it was under the old law.
Lastly, mailers funded by the state Democratic party put Lee on the hook for his association with Mark Robinson, whose controversial comments at public engagements have been criticized as transphobic, misogynistic, and antisemitic (even by fellow Republican Dale Folwell, the state Treasurer who challenged Robinson in the gubernatorial primary this year). Robinson has also repeatedly said he’d like a complete abortion ban – shirking off claims of hypocrisy because his wife had the procedure 30 years ago.
Lee has appeared with Robinson at public events and has not, that WHQR is aware of, publicly criticized him. As a leading member of the Senate, Lee would likely work with Robinson on key Republican agenda issues. This may be why Democrats treat abortion legislation as a slippery slope, especially if Republicans controlled the General Assembly, Governor’s office, and Supreme Court.
Lee told WHQR he had no intention of pursuing stricter abortion restrictions. “No sir, not remotely,” Lee wrote in an email.
Although not every undecided voter will take him at his word, it’s worth remembering that if Republicans did consider further restrictions they’d likely see motivated Democratic voters hitting the polls – and also disagreement in their own party. After all, roughly 40% of GOP voters feel abortion should be legal, at least up to three months.
