If you weren't able to join us for our most recent quarterly update, we want to make sure you're caught up. The conversation was urgent, sobering, and — thanks to two extraordinary guests — deeply grounded in both clinical reality and legislative action.
Here's what we covered.
The Real Numbers Behind Abortion Bans
We opened with data that deserves to be repeated loudly and often. Since the Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs decision returned abortion policy to the states, 19 states have either severely restricted or outright banned abortion access. The consequences have been both devastating and measurable.
A 2024 report from the Gender Equity Policy Institute found that people living in states with abortion bans are nearly twice as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or in the postpartum period. In states that have protected abortion access, maternal mortality fell by nearly 25%. In Texas, which has had a near-total ban in place since 2021, the numbers went the other direction. Black mothers in ban states are 3.3 times more likely to die than white mothers in those same states. Latina mothers in Texas face triple the risk compared to women in California, which has robust abortion protections.
The Story of Officer CJ Graham
One of those people was CJ Graham, a 34-year-old Greensboro police officer, mother of a two-year-old, and a woman with a known chronic heart condition. When she discovered she was six weeks pregnant, she sought treatment from her cardiologist. She did not receive it. She found another cardiac doctor. She still did not receive the care she needed.
What she needed was an abortion. But between North Carolina's 12-week ban and the logistical barriers that make scheduling abortion care in this state increasingly difficult, she had to wait. She waited more than two weeks. She never made it to her appointment. Officer Graham died in November 2023, leaving behind a child and a community that is still demanding answers.
Her story went viral earlier this year, and it is now at the center of new legislation being developed in her name.
What Physicians Are Up Against
Our first guest, Dr. Jenna Beckham, OB/GYN, abortion provider, and Board Chair of Pro-Choice North Carolina Foundation, was direct about what it looks like inside a clinical setting when politicians are effectively practicing medicine.
"Pregnancy is not a benign condition," she said. It places significant stress on every major organ system. For patients with underlying conditions like heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, or high blood pressure, pregnancy requires careful, individualized, multidisciplinary management. And for patients with no prior conditions at all, serious complications — preeclampsia, pregnancy-related cardiomyopathy — can develop quickly and escalate fast.
What abortion restrictions do, Dr. Beckham explained, is force physicians to pause at exactly the wrong moment. Instead of acting on their training and clinical judgment, doctors in restrictive states find themselves consulting legal teams, parsing vague statutory language, and waiting for a patient to get sick enough to clearly qualify for an exception. That delay costs lives.
It is also driving physicians out of restrictive states altogether, deepening healthcare deserts, particularly in rural North Carolina, where some counties already have little to no obstetric care.
What's Coming in the Short Session
Our second guest, State Senator Natalie Murdoch, has been fighting these battles on the floor of the NC General Assembly since before the 12-week ban passed in 2023. She was there that day. She warned them. And she has not stopped pushing back.
Senator Murdoch outlined several bills her caucus plans to introduce when the legislature returns on April 21:
The CJ Graham Act will address the core failure her case exposed: that a pregnant person with a serious underlying medical condition can be denied the care their non-pregnant self would have received without question. The bill will require that physicians be able to provide care regardless of pregnancy status, so that a heart condition does not suddenly become untreatable because a patient is also pregnant.
A state-level WHALE Act, modeled on federal legislation, will respond to another heartbreaking case — a woman in Indiana who was turned away from a hospital and gave birth on the side of the road. The bill would require hospitals to ensure patients in labor have safe discharge plans, confirmed transportation, and identified backup facilities before being sent home.
Senator Murdoch's caucus will also continue pushing for a full repeal of North Carolina's 12-week abortion ban, as well as legislation focused on maternal health for military families, expanded rural mobile health units, HBCU pipeline support for future OB/GYNs and midwives, and care for justice-involved and reentry populations.
What You Can Do
Bill numbers will be assigned once the session opens. As soon as we have them, we will send them directly to you with everything you need to contact your legislators and make your voice heard. A Day at the Capitol is also being planned. Stay tuned for details.
If you are not already on our email list, sign up today. This session will move fast, and we want you ready.
Reproductive freedom is not a talking point. It is a matter of life and death — and the stories of CJ Graham and so many others make that impossible to ignore.
