NC enacts tighter abortion restrictions after GOP-controlled legislature overrides veto of controversial bill
North Carolina enacted the most extensive reduction in abortion access in decades following a veto override Tuesday in the state’s Republican-controlled General Assembly.
The state House of Representatives voted 72-48 to nullify the veto by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. The vote, which came hours after the Senate’s 30-20 party-line override tally, capped an extraordinary legislative whirlwind.
Negotiated behind the scenes, the bill was a compromise of a wide range of views on abortion within the GOP. Some members wanted to ban all abortions. Others wanted to keep the laws as-is. It was introduced May 2 and zipped through both chambers in less than 48 hours. Cooper vetoed it Saturday, after more than a week of touring the state trying to whip up public opinion against the changes.
The bill’s survival serves as the signature moment for conservative activists and lawmakers who have wanted to tighten the laws for years, and it ends months of speculation over how — or if — Republican legislators might pull it off.
The measure reduces the cutoff for many abortions from 20 weeks to 12 and adds restrictions to women seeking abortions and clinics seeking to provide them.
It would also increase spending on foster care, adoption services and child care subsidies. Republicans call those provisions an effort to help children after they’re born, not just in the womb; Democrats say the legislature should pass only those measures without the abortion restrictions.
Debate on the chamber floors Tuesday featured familiar refrains — from saving the unborn on the right, to the role of government in reproductive care on the left.
"An unborn baby at some point during the pregnancy becomes a person who deserves the protection of a law," Sen. Amy Galey, R-Alamance, said as lawmakers argued the motion on the floor. "An unborn baby is not a sack of cells in the uterus. It is not a cancer. It is not a parasite."
Sen. Natasha Marcus, D-Mecklenburg, said the government has no right to intrude on a woman's health and personal choices over their bodies.
"It is honestly hard for me to believe that my government would do this to my daughters, to my friends, to their daughters," she said. "In many cases we will be forced to continue unwanted and unsafe pregnancies, to give birth against our will, to risk our lives as we are forced to forego or delay treatments."
Rep. Marcia Morey, D-Durham, called the bill an act of “extreme government control,” adding: “We are risking women’s lives. We are threatening doctors, nurses, clinicians, with legal action.”
Supermajority win, Cooper loss
Turning back the veto is the hallmark victory so far for the GOP’s newfound supermajority — a fever-dream scenario that Democrats might not have expected only months ago.
A veto override requires a supermajority, or 60% of the vote, of the lawmakers present in the state House and Senate when the vote is called.
When this year’s legislative session began, Republicans were just shy of that mark, by a single seat in the House, after Democrats had spent tens of millions of dollars in the 2022 elections stopping a GOP supermajority. Then, in April, Charlotte-area Rep. Tricia Cotham, a recent supporter of expanding abortion access in the state, abruptly announced that she was defecting from the Democratic Party and joining the GOP.
Within a couple weeks, House Speaker Tim Moore revealed that Republicans had reached a broad consensus on the major features of an abortion bill. Less than a month after Cotham switched parties, Republican legislators announced the details of their 47-page-bill.
Cotham, earlier this year when she was still a Democrat, co-sponsored a bill to enshrine the protections of Roe v. Wade into state law. After changing sides she voted with her new party when the bill first came up, and again during the override Tuesday.
In a statement after Tuesday’s vote, Cotham didn’t address why she made such a drastic change in her stance on abortion policy. She instead said she didn’t identify with either of the extreme ends of the abortion debate. “I believe this bill strikes a reasonable balance on the abortion issue and represents a middle ground that anyone not holding one of the two extremist positions can support,” she said.
Her vote represents a failure by Cooper to coerce her and several other suburban Republicans — Reps. John Bradford and Ted Davis and Sen. Michael Lee — to side with him. Cooper traversed the state last week, holding roundtables with doctors and reproductive rights advocates in their districts, pressing constituents to pressure their lawmakers to oppose the override.
Davis said he received over 5,000 calls, texts and emails from people on both sides of the abortion debate, urging him to vote one way or another. He ultimately voted for the override.
Cooper needed only one Republican to abstain or support his veto.
“Strong majorities of North Carolinians don’t want right-wing politicians in the exam room with women and their doctors, which is even more understandable today after several Republican lawmakers broke their promises to protect women’s reproductive freedom,” Cooper said in a statement after the vote.
Republican leaders in the GOP-controlled House and Senate were confident going into Tuesday that they could close ranks. Leaders of both chambers forecasted swift overrides in the preceding days.
And on Tuesday, their predictions proved correct; parts of the bill now become law immediately. The main focus of the bill, the new restrictions, will become law starting in July. And yet other pieces will become law starting in October.
Emotional day, personal testimony
For the progressive activists who protested at the legislature Tuesday, the bill was seen as yet another front in the GOP’s culture war efforts targeting women and minorities. Outside the legislature, performers in drag gathered with pro-immigrant and pro-abortion protesters, where they lampooned top lawmakers in a drag show.
Inside, a hundred or more activists rallied for both sides. Some carried signs urging lawmakers to “Vote Pro-Life.” Opponents’ signs proclaimed “Bans off Our Bodies.” As lawmakers cast their votes, cheers could be heard, as could boos and chants of “shame.” Some of the more vocal protesters were ejected from the gallery.
The debate on the chamber floors featured deeply personal anecdotes and deeply held beliefs on religion, morality and the role of government.
Diamond Staton-Williams, D-Cabarrus, told the story of her own abortion.
In 2002 she was a young mother with two daughters, working full time while also going to school. She found out she was pregnant even though she had been on birth control, she said, and ultimately decided to have an abortion so that she could finish her schooling and improve her career. She later had another child, a boy, several years later. But her decision to have an abortion when she did ensured that she and her husband could provide a better life for all their kids, she said.
“I am someone who has grown up in the church and believes in the power of God,” Staton-Williams said. “I know that I go through trials and tribulations. I know we all will. And I know that ultimately, I have been given the freedom of mind to make decisions for myself.”
As she mentioned growing up in the church, a top Republican, Rep. Keith Kidwell, R-Beaufort, was in the back of the chamber talking to staffers. He quipped that Staton-Williams must have meant the Church of Satan.
Religious morality was a common theme throughout the debate.
“There is a moral component to the decision to have an abortion,” Galey said, based on her belief that “when there is an unborn child, the government must intervene to protect that life.”
Nearly every state lawmaker is Christian, but there are a few members of other faiths on the Democratic side. Rep. Caleb Rudow, D-Buncombe, said that while he practices Judaism he wasn’t going to try to influence state law based on what his rabbi says. Neither should other lawmakers, he said.
“This country is founded on the separation of church and state, and the free practice of everyone’s religious beliefs,” he said, adding that while he does support people making personal decisions based on their religion not to have abortions, “I think we should keep politicians out of people’s relationship with faith in God.”
Provisions and paperwork
The new law takes North Carolina's current ban on abortions down from 20 weeks — with exceptions for medical emergencies — to 12 weeks. That timeframe can be extended in cases of rape or incest (20 weeks) or life-limiting fetal abnormalities (24 weeks). Abortion would stay legal any time a doctor declares a medical emergency.
Other aspects of the law make it more onerous for many women to get an abortion at any time, critics say. A phone consultation required by current law at least 72-hours before an abortion would have to be held in person under the new law. The bill also adds a post-abortion doctor's appointment.
The spaced-out appointments will be difficult to keep, Democrats have argued, for women with full-time jobs, women with other children to care for and women who don't have money for travel. There are only 14 abortion clinics in North Carolina, located in nine of the state's 100 counties. Abortions must be performed at a clinic or a hospital, and Democratic lawmakers said 20 North Carolina counties don't have a hospital.
“The things in this bill are not obstacles to abortion,” Rep. Sarah Stevens, R-Surry, said Tuesday. “They’re safeguards.”
The law also calls for new clinic licensing rules for clinics. There's some dispute just what the bill requires here, but Planned Parenthood, which operates six of the state's 14 clinics, has said none of its facilities meet the expected new regulations and would either have to close or upgrade at unknown costs.
Doctors groups have complained about new paperwork and reporting requirements in the bill, which they say are not medically necessary — a point that was raised by at least one Democratic lawmaker.
Speed of passage, lack of public comment
Rep. Julie von Haefen, D-Wake, and other Democrats ridiculed the fact that the law requires a 72 hour wait for women to get an abortion — longer than the 42 hours it took GOP leaders to introduce and pass the measure.
She said it’s a sign that Republicans know their plan is unpopular, suggesting that they tried to force it through before people could find out about it and organize resistance to it.
“We talk a lot in this building and in this chamber about freedom and choices,” von Haefen said. “I hear all the time, ‘We need to have the choice where to send our kids to school, we need the freedom to carry guns.’ But when it comes to women, and their freedom and their choices, this concept seems to disappear. That’s because abortion bans are really about control.”
House Speaker Tim Moore said Republicans have done extensive polling on the details in the bill and believe that their plan enjoys support from the majority of North Carolina voters.
A WRAL News poll in July showed that most North Carolinians wanted abortion laws to stay the same or become less restrictive. A few months later, another WRAL News poll showed that Tar Heel State residents were supportive of a law banning abortion at 20 weeks, but they were more divided on whether further restrictions are needed.
The issue is expected to feature heavily in the 2024 election cycle. Less than an hour after the vote, elected officials sent emails requesting donations.
Moore told reporters after Tuesday’s vote that the GOP isn’t worried about election losses in 2024 because of opposition to the new abortion restrictions.
“Once this law is implemented and people understand that it’s not cutting off access to women who needs this, it’s not cutting off access in those very early stages of pregnancy, it’s not doing things that frankly have been misstated about it, that the public will … be happy and satisfied with where we are,” Moore said.
President Biden’s administration was skeptical. It called the measure a dangerous bill that will harm patients and threaten doctors.
“President Biden and Vice President Harris will continue to work alongside Governor Cooper, state legislators, and Americans who are fighting to protect access to reproductive health care in the face of relentless attacks, and will continue to call on Congress to restore the protections of Roe for all people in every state,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
WRAL State Government Editor Jack Hagel and WRAL state government reporters Travis Fain and Paul Specht contributed to this report.
