With less than a week until President-elect Donald Trump takes office, North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein (D) has taken new steps to enhance state protections for abortion providers and shield patients’ reproductive health information.
“I don’t know what will happen, but what I am trying to communicate to the people of this state is that they have a champion in me for their personal privacy and their right to make their own health care decisions,” Stein said at a conference.
Stein’s executive order commands state agencies to support doctors performing abortions within the state, and to refuse to cooperate with efforts to penalize, investigate, or prosecute people for charges related to reproductive health care, including abortion. It also requires state agencies to review and update the storage of data related to patients’ reproductive health in a way that will “maximize protections for individual privacy,” according to the order.
There has been increasing concern that patient information, including location data sold by data brokers about visits to abortion clinics, could be used as evidence in abortion-related prosecutions. Stein’s executive order thus aims to protect people from facing criminal or civil penalties imposed by other states, noting that “other states may attempt to impose criminal or civil penalties on people who travel to other states, including North Carolina, to access reproductive health care services.”
The misuse of sensitive reproductive health care data exposes a concerning trend, with anti-abortion state attorneys general seeking access to this information through ongoing legal battles. In fact, state attorneys general are currently challenging Biden-administration privacy laws in order to seek detailed patient and medical records related to abortion services. Additionally, anti-abortion Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is testing the limits of state data protection laws, called ‘shield laws,’ by suing an out-of-state doctor for prescribing abortion medication via telehealth to a Texas patient.
Stein, who was elected governor last year after serving as attorney general of North Carolina, has faced fierce opposition to abortion rights from the conservative state legislature. The Center for Reproductive Rights characterizes North Carolina as “hostile” to abortion, and the state implemented a 12-week ban on abortion that took effect on July 1, 2023. As attorney general, Stein refused to defend the law in court and instead joined Planned Parenthood in suing the legislature, arguing that parts of the law were unconstitutional.
“Our state has seen alarming attacks on women’s reproductive rights over the past few years, and I remain committed to doing everything in my power to protect women’s freedoms and their privacy,” Stein said Thursday.
Stein’s executive order expands a 2022 directive by former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper that ordered state law enforcement not to extradite people charged in other states for actions related to reproductive health that were legal in North Carolina, such as driving someone to access an abortion. Stein’s order goes even further by prohibiting state law enforcement from arresting people who are wanted in another state for abortion-related or other reproductive health-related crimes, unless the actions in question are also illegal under North Carolina law.
Stein’s order also includes provisions to protect access to birth control.“The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (“DHHS”) is hereby directed to take appropriate and feasible measures, in consultation with the Office of the Governor, to ensure North Carolinians have reliable, consistent access to safe and legal reproductive health care medications and birth control,” the executive order states. This measure was likely added in response to concerns raised after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. At that time, conservative Justice Clarence Thomas suggested that the Court might revisit precedents that guarantee access to contraception.
Stein’s executive order comes as Democratic governors and lawmakers across the country are ramping up efforts to address potential anti-abortion measures before the incoming Trump administration. Stein’s executive order notes that, “in addition to state-level restrictions on reproductive health care access following Dobbs, there is a risk that the federal government will soon similarly begin restricting access to reproductive health care services.”
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