'Just the beginning': NC Republicans say more abortion restrictions possible after 2024 elections

North Carolina’s new abortion restrictions — banning the procedure after 12 weeks, down from 20 weeks — was a compromise of the wide-ranging views on the issue in the state Republican Party.

But it may be a short-lived settlement, depending on how successful Republicans are in the 2024 elections.

“This represents the legislation that I believe this General Assembly can pass,” Moore said. “I can’t say what’ll happen two years, four years, 10 years from now.”

That’s an acknowledgment that, at least for now, Republicans don’t have the votes to go further.

The other top Republican lawmaker, Senate leader Phil Berger, made similar remarks to reporters, also following the veto override Tuesday.

“I think we ended up in a good place for where we are right now,” Berger said.

Republicans this year faced the political reality that they needed unanimous support among GOP lawmakers to pass any abortion restrictions into law, since in both chambers they had the bare minimum number of votes required to override a veto by Cooper.

But the 2024 elections offer two opportunities to change that math, since Cooper can’t run for governor again. If Republicans take the governor’s mansion — or even if they lose the governor’s race but win more seats in the legislature — then they will be able to pass further abortion restrictions that are too extreme for some Republicans, but which the party base has been clamoring for.

“Who knows who's going to be in the General Assembly after the next election?” Berger said. “There may be members that want to push it further on the restrictive side. There may be members who want to increase the window for the elective [procedure].”

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Republican lawmakers are already receiving subtle pressure from conservative and religious groups who want stricter limits on the procedure.

The N.C. Values Coalition, a Christian conservative group, called the new abortion restrictions that became law Tuesday night “the beginning of North Carolina’s first real step towards becoming a pro-life state.”

The Catholic Dioceses of Raleigh and Charlotte similarly said they viewed the law as just a start. “Together these provisions represent progress toward building a culture of life in North Carolina,” the state’s two Catholic bishops wrote in a joint statement.

What happens next could come down to elections and the courts — and Republicans maintain control over the state Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court. In recent weeks the party's main concern, at least publicly, has been less over lawsuits and more over public perception of the law.

The new rules were negotiated in secret by a select group of GOP lawmakers. One of them was Iredell County Sen. Vickie Sawyer, who said that while the law is a commonsense approach in her opinion, it will likely continue to change in the years to come.

“We also want to make slow and incremental changes over time,” Sawyer told WRAL News earlier this month when the bill was first publicly introduced.

Many of her fellow Republicans were initially opposed to allowing exceptions for issues such as rape, incest or medical complications, Sawyer said, adding that she fought hard to get those added into the final compromise.

“If you ever knew how hard those meetings were,” Sawyer said. “How hard I fought for that rape exception, that incest exception. And how hard that was to get across the line.”

Beyond the law’s 12-week ban for most abortions, the exceptions include a ban after 24 weeks in cases of fetal abnormalities — roughly the same cutoff that had been in place nationwide for all abortions, due to Roe v. Wade, until last year.

The bill also extends the cutoff for rape and incest victims to 20 weeks. And there is no time limit on abortions needed to save the life of the mother.

If the GOP wins more seats in the state legislature next year, or if a Republican governor is elected, then social conservatives would have more wiggle room to pass stricter abortion rules that don’t enjoy unanimous support within the GOP.

Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, a Republican who is running for governor, said earlier this year that if he is elected governor in 2024 he would sign a law fully banning all abortions — with no exceptions for anything, including rape, incest or to save the mother’s life.

Robinson has since somewhat softened his approach, changing his stance in his speech last month when he officially announced his run for governor. He now says he would support a fetal heartbeat ban, which is typically a ban on abortions after six weeks.

He repeated that Wednesday, in an interview with conservative talk radio host KC O’Dea, and again said he hopes the rules continue to become stricter after the 2024 elections.

“It gives ourselves the opportunity to set ourselves up to get ready to continue to move the ball,” Robinson said. “And when I say to move the ball, what I mean is to continue to try to save lives in the womb, and to continue to do the hard work it’s going to take to enhance those lives once those individuals are born.”

Other conservatives — including Sawyer — view even Robinson’s newer stance on a six-week heartbeat abortion ban as politically untenable in a swing state like North Carolina. She said in the interview earlier this month that GOP leaders carefully researched how each part of the bill polled before they unveiled it to the public.

“We did not go extreme, like some other states, with banning of abortion at six weeks,” Sawyer said. “Now, some of my Republican brethren hate — are not very excited about that. ‘We didn’t go far enough.’ But I say to them, we are right where North Carolinians want to be.”

She added that there are real consequences to going too far, not just for the women affected but for the politicians pushing those rules: “If we go too far, then voters, like they have in other states, will tell us we went too far.”

Democrats are counting on Robinson to continue voicing his opinions on abortion, hoping it will sink his chances of becoming governor and help Attorney General Josh Stein — the Democratic Party favorite — succeed Cooper as governor.

Less than an hour after Tuesday’s vote, Stein issued a statement tapping into fears among Democrats that more restrictions were in the offing.

“Make no mistake — this is only the beginning,” Stein said. “In 2024, we’re up against politicians like Mark Robinson who want to make abortion illegal for any reason even in cases of rape or incest. Over the next 16 months and next November, we must choose freedom and we must win elections.”

State Democratic Party spokesperson Kate Frauenfelder added in a press release Wednesday: “Mark Robinson is even more extreme than his Republican colleagues in the legislature and if elected Governor, he wants to make abortion illegal for any reason even in the case of rape or incest. We will keep working to hold him and the extreme field of GOP candidates accountable to ensure that their dangerous agenda does not become a reality for North Carolinians next fall.”

The other Republican candidate for governor, N.C. Treasurer Dale Folwell, has said that he does support exceptions for rape, incest and the save the life of the mother. He would’ve signed this law if he had been governor now, he said. A potential third contender, former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker, has a rally planned Saturday where he might announce his own run for governor.

Looking past the governor’s race, Republicans plan to redraw the lines used to elect all 50 Senators and 120 members of the House. All of those seats will also be up for election next year, under maps different from what exists now.

The district maps GOP leaders had originally wanted were ruled unconstitutionally gerrymandered last year — too unfairly skewed in favor of Republican candidates. But then earlier this year, Republicans took back control of the state Supreme Court and undid that ruling. That gives GOP lawmakers the power, now, to go back to the old maps that had previously been ruled unconstitutional — or possibly to draw new lines giving themselves even more of a political advantage.

Democrats aren’t rolling over, though; Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, D-Wake, emailed supporters Tuesday asking for donations “to bring balance to North Carolina’s legislature” next year.

Asked about the bill Wednesday at a NASCAR event in North Wilkesboro, Cooper mentioned how Republicans have accused him and other Democrats of exaggerating how much the law will actually restrict abortions. He said he hopes that eventually turns out to be true.

“There were a lot of arguments being made at the time about this legislation being less restrictive than we had warned,” he said. “So we’re going to work very hard to make those arguments come true. And I will never, ever give up fighting for women’s health in North Carolina.”

For there to be further restrictions, the restrictions passed Tuesday must first stand in court.

There’s the looming possibility of lawsuits against the bill, which contains at least one provision that was already ruled unconstitutional as recently as 2019 — a second attempt at a law requiring lifetime GPS monitoring of sex offenders. And some of the parts on abortion likely will also face legal challenges in the months and years to come.

Jenny Black, CEO of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, said the bill contains harsh provisions that seem intended to put abortion clinics out of business, by forcing them to have wider hallways and surgical-level equipment, even just to hand someone a pill, and requiring patients to have multiple in-person visits with a doctor.

“None of these additional visits are medically necessary,” she told WRAL on Wednesday “These are intended to be hurdles to health care — barriers. This is an obstacle course that they created between patients and their health care.”

It might eventually lead to lawsuits, but in the meantime conservative activists see that as a plus.

Tami Fitzgerald, who leads the N.C. Values Coalition, one of the main groups supporting the new law, didn't deny that it would put obstacles in the way of abortion. However, she pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs decision means states did away with the previous standard that state laws cannot impede access to abortion.

"Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, states are free to do whatever they think the voters in their state want on abortion," Fitzgerald said.

North Carolina legislators followed the will of their voters, Fitzgerald said. Conservative groups and Republican lawmakers have cited internal polling showing that most voters would support the restrictions. Other nonpartisan polls have found that most North Carolinians don’t want further restrictions.

Nonetheless, Black said she expects the legislature to pursue further restrictions.

“I believe that this is just the beginning, that they are going to keep at it until abortion is inaccessible in North Carolina,” she said.