North Carolina Speaker of the House Tim Moore said Thursday that Republican lawmakers have reached a “consensus position” to ban abortion in the state after about 12 weeks, with exceptions for rape, incest, fetal abnormalities and to protect the mother’s life.
Such a consensus could set the stage for a long-anticipated bill to change the state’s abortion laws, though Moore told reporters there’s no timetable in place to introduce that bill and that formal debate would likely wait until May.
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State law currently bans abortions after 20 weeks, unless needed later on to save the mother’s life.
Moore, R-Cleveland, said that House and Senate Republicans — who hold veto-proof majorities in both chambers — “are close to being on the same page” on the bill and that details still need to be worked out.
“But at a high level, that [12 week] consensus position I think is what you're going to see,” Moore said.
GOP lawmakers have said repeatedly they want to reach consensus among House and Senate Republicans before rolling out a bill. Asked whether after Moore’s comments whether that consensus had been reached, Senate Republican Leader Phil Berger would only say lawmakers are “still talking.”
“I'm not prepared to make any statements at this time,” Berger, R-Rockingham, said in a brief interview Thursday, as he left the Senate floor for an appointment. “We're still talking with our members."
For months, much of the discussion at the statehouse has centered on a ban around 12 weeks. Berger has previously said he supports a ban after the first trimester, often defined as the 12th week of pregnancy. He also supports abortions later in pregnancy for cases of rape and incest or when the mother’s life is in danger.
Moore has previously said he supports a ban at the time an ultrasound first detects fetal cardiac activity — typically about six weeks after fertilization. In many cases, that’s before patients even know they are pregnant.
"The consensus position that we've developed, and I think I've been saying this now for quite a while, is around a 12-week period, with those exceptions built in for rape, incest, life of the mother and fetal abnormality,” Moore told reporters Thursday. “I believe there's been pretty well universal agreement on those.”
Other provisions are “being worked through,” Moore said. He and other Republican lawmakers have said they want to pair abortion legislation with reforms that make it easier to adopt, improve health care access for expectant mothers and young children and reform the state’s foster care system.
Moore reiterated those points Thursday.
Consensus over 12 weeks in his chamber follows weeks of debate. Moore said in February that there had been support for a range of restrictions, from six weeks to leaving it at 20 weeks.
An agreement on 12 weeks would essentially doom more long-shot proposals filed in recent weeks by a minority of GOP lawmakers, including one to ban abortion after conception.
Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, a strong supporter of abortion rights, would likely veto a GOP-backed bill to would further restrict abortion access.
"This proposal takes away the freedom of women and their doctors to make deeply personal health care decisions just like the Republicans' latest scheme to take away access to mifepristone. In so many ways, the government overreach by this Republican legislature into people’s personal lives is alarming," Cooper said in a statement.