The order, announced Tuesday afternoon in Charlotte, focuses on what cabinet agencies should and shouldn’t do regarding reproductive health care.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. โ North Carolina governor Josh Stein has announced an executive order he said will protect women’s rights to reproductive health care across the state.
During a news conference Tuesday, Stein said the order will direct his cabinet agencies to protect medical privacy, give women seeking reproductive care accurate information about pregnancies, and protect doctors providing care in North Carolina.
“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 safety,” Gov. Stein said. “I am directing my cabinet agencies to take specific action to protect women and health care providers from extreme anti-reproductive freedom laws.”
The order directs cabinet agencies to protect medical professionals providing said services, particularly by not cooperating with efforts to impose penalties on providers, including investigation or prosecution. It also tells the agencies to protect women’s medical privacy by reviewing policies about records and data they collect related to reproductive healthcare while revising those policies as needed.
Stein’s move comes as Dr. Katherine Farris with Planned Parenthoodย says privacy concerns are growing.ย
“Patients regularly ask me whether the information I’m putting into their medical record is going to be visible to somebody else,” Farris said. “No one should fear that their private, personal healthcare data might be used against them.” ย
The state Department of Health and Human Services is further required under the order to provide information about the differences between licensed healthcare providers and other entities like pregnancy crisis centers on printed and online materials. He also wants DHHS to further safeguard access to birth control and reproductive health care medications.
Stein, who most recently served as North Carolina’s attorney general, was elected to the governor’s seat during the 2024 elections. He succeeded former governor Roy Cooper, a fellow Democrat who served the maximum two terms in office.
The issue ofย abortion was a key topic in the Tar Heel State during the 2024 election cycle. The 2024 campaign saw Stein face off against Republican opponent Mark Robinson, who was at the time the lieutenant governor. Stein’s positions that he ran on included promises to veto any efforts by a conservative majority in the state legislature to veto attempts to curtail reproductive freedoms. During his time as attorney general, he was part of a court case trying to make the abortion pill more accessible. Robinson opposed abortion and supported a six-week ban on it with exceptions for rape and incest.
In 2023, the state legislature passed a law that banned abortion after 12 weeks with exceptions for rape or incest, something Robinson said he was okay with.
Contact Julia Kauffman at jkauffman@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, X andย Instagram.ย
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