Riding high on the wave of reactionary politics quickly eroding both civil liberties and longstanding constitutional protections, the Republican dominated General Assembly in North Carolina has quietly decided to introduce its own submission for ‘America’s Most Repressive Abortion Legislation’. The heroically entitled “Human Life Protection Act of 2025” (hereafter referred to by its designation HB 804) has been sponsored, not surprisingly by two white male representatives and co-sponsored by. . . wait for it. . . to more white male representatives and promises to turn North Carolina into yet another danger zone for medical practitioners who might be asked to perform an abortion — HB 804 establishes abortions performed outside the bill’s fairly narrow and ill-defined exclusions as a Class B felony, subjects the practitioner to a $100,000 or more civil penalty and professional penalties including revocation of licensure.

While acknowledging the token exceptions granted for ectopic pregnancies and situations where an abortion is, “[i]n the exercise of reasonable medical judgement”, needed to preserve a woman’s life (notably absent in the language are exceptions offered for victims of sex crimes of any variety), the requirements imposed on medical practitioners would almost certainly result in fewer practitioners willing to accept the legal and professional risks. The bill seems to give medical professionals a certain amount of leeway, but it ultimately creates a proverbial sword of Damocles that threatens to decapitate any doctor who performs an abortion that the state determines did not meet the level of seriousness to be permitted under this bill.

Part III of the bill is mired in legalese and intentionally opaque language that makes it unclear, at least to the average citizen, whether or not HB 804 also criminalizes the pregnant woman’s actions that might or do terminate a pregnancy. At a glance, it appears that the bill, in its current form, does not allow for the prosecution of pregnant women, which would put it several steps ahead of some states. However, it also seems to leave open the possibility of prosecution under other statutes as it reads:

Nothing in this Article shall be construed to permit prosecution under the Article of any of the following: 1) Acts which cause the death of an unborn child if those acts were lawful pursuant to the provisions of. . . G.S. 14-45.2

As I see it, a pregnant woman could still be prosecuted under any of the myriad statues encompassed in this range. In fact, after reviewing some sections of the General Statutes 14-45.2, there is an entire article (6A) pertaining to “Unborn Victims” that could still be used as a basis for legal action.

Most troubling, however, is the definition HB 804 uses for an unborn child:

(5) Unborn child – An individual living member of the homo sapiens species from fertilization until birth, including the entire embryonic and fetal stages of development.

Here we see the sponsors’ effort to imbue even the very first flash of zygotic activity with personhood but simultaneously denying that ‘person’ and “the female” (yes, this is how the bill repeatedly refers to the women at the center of all this) many of the considerations afforded to actually born children. An ‘unborn child’ does not count towards your household number for SNAP benefits, nor can you claim an ‘unborn child’ as a dependent on your taxes. There is no scientific rationale for declaring a bundle of cells in the earliest moments of development an ‘unborn child’ — this is like calling a handful of bolts an ‘unmade chest of drawers’. Efforts like this are not based in science, nor are they based in some kind of overzealous desire to protect innocent life — they are meant to plant seeds of theocracy. They are the foundations for what happens when the First Amendment collapses and a fundamentalist Christian superstate emerges. Proposed legislation like HB 804 are salvos in the so-called ‘culture wars’ that have done little but blind the electorate to the fact that we are all, Republican and Democrat, red and blue, religious and otherwise, being fucked over by the same powerbrokers, career politicians, media parasites and wannabe despots. HB 804 and the countless bills and laws like it across the country are meant to keep us arguing about the tablecloth while those in power remove the table from underneath it.