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What happens in North Carolina if Roe v. Wade is overturned?

Legal experts said if this gets overturned, the decision to keep abortion legal would be up to individual states.

NORTH CAROLINA, USA — With Roe v. Wade in question, it's important to know what the case is. Roe v. Wade is the name of the lawsuit that led to the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion in the United States.

This landmark decision protects a pregnant woman's right to choose to have a legal abortion in any state.

Marie-Amélie George, an associate professor at Wake Forest School of Law said if this gets overturned, the decision to keep abortion legal would be up to individual states.

She also said it will have no immediate impact.

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"North Carolina law allows for abortions under specific circumstances up until a specific point in the pregnancy with a waiting period between the initial consultation and the actual procedure," George said. "There have been efforts to make that law more restrictive, but Governor Cooper has vetoed those efforts, and he said that those would continue to veto those efforts."

The document leaked Monday night is just a draft and no final ruling has happened. Still, both experts agree the conversation around abortion rights, will not go away. 

"We've had these conversations since Roe v. Wade, we had these conversations prior to Roe v. Wade when I wasn't even thought of, so that means that we've had these conversations, people have been talking about it, they're going to continue to talk about it," NC A&T Professor Saiyani Mukombe said. 

Again, this is just a draft and won't be finalized until this summer. No decisions or laws have been changed at this time.  

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