Updates to our Terms of Use

We are updating our Terms of Use. Please carefully review the updated Terms before proceeding to our website.

Thursday, March 14, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

North Carolina General Assembly overrides veto of 12-week abortion ban

Democratic Governor Roy Cooper had vetoed the bill, which restricts pregnant women from obtaining an abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy.

RALEIGH, N.C. (CN) — North Carolina's Republican supermajority banned most abortions after the first trimester of pregnancy with a veto override Tuesday.

Senate Bill 20, titled the “Care for Women, Children, and Families Act,” restricts North Carolina residents from attaining an abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy — a significantly shorter window than the state’s previous 20-week rule. 

“If we genuinely believe in the sanctity of life, we need to recognize our medical professionals as the experts that they are,” North Carolina state Representative Diamond Staton-Williams told a hushed chamber on Tuesday night. 

As the clock counted down to a deciding vote in the state’s House, the Democrat of Cabarrus County explained her personal experience with having an abortion.

While pursuing her education and raising two daughters, Staton-Williams discovered she was pregnant and chose, with her husband and family, to terminate the pregnancy. 

“It was not an easy decision at all. It was not made lightly or frivolously, and it wasn’t birth control because I was on birth control," she said. "I knew that in order for my family to prosper and to continue with the opportunities that we had in front of us, that this was the best decision for us.”

“When I read this language of Senate Bill 20, all I see is the removal of the God-given right for myself and folks like me to make decisions for ourselves. The ability to choose what’s best for us has been removed,” Staton-Williams added.

The bill advanced through both chambers in about 42 hours last week, which, as some Democratic representatives pointed out, was about 30 hours less than the waiting period the bill requires for women seeking an abortion. 

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper vetoed the measure and spoke against the bill during a rally in downtown Raleigh on Saturday, but the state’s new GOP supermajority ultimately leaves the Democrat with little veto power. 

After debates Tuesday, the Senate voted 30-20 along party lines to override the veto, while the House did so with a 72-48 vote. 

Governor Cooper told rally-goers on Saturday that, if one Republican lawmaker in either the House or Senate chose to support his veto, the bill would fail, because the Republican Party has a majority of just one vote in each chamber. 

“Make no mistake — if these legislators vote to override this veto, they are voting to ban abortions in North Carolina,” Cooper wrote ahead of the vote on Tuesday.

“Governor Cooper has spent the last week actively feeding the public lies about Senate Bill 20 and bullying members of the General Assembly,” Republican Senate leader Phil Berger said in a statement over the weekend. 

Republican state Senator Victoria Sawyer and other Republican senators spent much of their allotted time Tuesday painting the bill as a “mainstream” measure that is favorable to most North Carolinians. 

“North Carolinians watching this debate, you're bearing witness to exaggerated and extremist objections from some Democrats who are being led by the delusions of a national far-left agenda,” Sawyer said.

She noted that the bill allocates about $160 million to social services. 

Republican state Senator Amy Galey said the bill “keeps abortion safe, legal and rare,” adding, “a restriction with exceptions is not a ban.”

The bill adds “informed consent” measures and includes certain reporting requirements for physicians.

It allows abortions before 20 weeks of pregnancy in cases of rape or incest, and before 24 weeks if  “a qualified physician determines there exists a life-limiting anomaly” in the fetus.  

The bill also outlaws out-of-state mailing of abortion inducing drugs and requires in-person visits with a physician before and after the prescription of such medication.

“This bill is a slap in the face. It is a muzzle over our mouths and it is a straightjacket on our bodies. It is honestly hard for me to believe that my government would do this to me, to my daughters, to my friends, to their daughters. 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 forgo or delay treatments that are incompatible with pregnancy, like, for example, cancer treatments, mental health conditions, drug addictions,” Democratic state Senator Natasha Marcus said. 

She added that the bill could cause health care professionals to flee the state, hindering health care access to many. Her Democratic colleagues in the state House later noted that women in rural areas and those without reliable transportation will be the most negatively affected by the bill. 

“I can tell that you’re feeling the heat about the public outrage about this bill. I assume that’s why you’re moving it so quickly, literally, the fastest I have ever seen a bill move in the General Assembly,” Marcus told her Republican colleagues.

Republican lawmakers said the measure is a compromise and is “common sense” legislation. 

“You may be wishing that this was a mainstream bill, one that was popular and reasonable, but it is not . You could have written a bill like that, but you didn’t. The bill before you only gives the average pregnant person about two weeks from when she typically finds out she's pregnant to when she has to schedule her abortion, if that's what she wants to do. She cant wait any longer to think about it and to consult with her family, her doctors, her pastor. She'll have to decide quickly, because, thanks to you and this bill, the clock is ticking,” Marcus said. 

The North Carolina Senate proposed a budget this week that also takes aim at family planning programs, slashing state funding for health facilities that provide abortions.

Follow @@ErikaKate5
Categories / Government, Health, Law

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Loading...