North Carolina Governor Says He'll Veto Pro-Life Bill Prohibiting Abortion After First Trimester

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper speaks to the crowd during an election night event for Democratic Senate candidate Cheri Beasley in Raleigh, N.C., on May 17, 2022. Sean Rayford/Getty Images

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said he will veto a proposed bill that would ban abortions after 12 weeks.

According to House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger, House and Senate Republicans came to a consensus on legislation that would enact the legislation.

Currently, state law prohibits abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy with the exceptions of circumstances involving rape, incest, fetal abnormality, or when the life of the mother is at risk.

Those exceptions remain in the new legislation, which Cooper has called an attack on women’s freedom to choose.

“It will effectively ban access to reproductive freedom earlier and sometimes altogether for many women because of new restrictions and requirements,” Cooper said in a press release. “This is why Republicans are ramming it through with no chance to amend. I will veto this extreme ban and need everyone’s help to hold it.”

Final votes on the legislation will take place in the House on Wednesday and in the Senate on Thursday before going to Cooper’s desk.

Republicans, however, hold a veto-proof majority in the House and Senate.

In the 2022 election, Republicans gained a supermajority in the Senate by two seats, while the House failed to gain a supermajority.

Then, in April, North Carolina Rep. Tricia Cotham switched from Democrat to Republican, giving the Republican House the full supermajority with the power to override any veto by Cooper, a governor who’s vetoed a record amount of Republican bills.

‘Pro-Family Measures’

According to Berger, the legislation will not only put limitations on second and third-trimester abortions but also provide $160 million for childcare access, paid parental leave for teachers and state employees, maternal health, and additional “pro-family measures.”

“The ‘Care for Women, Children, and Families Act’ is comprehensive healthcare legislation that will update the current law allowing abortions well into the second trimester, establish new standards for healthcare facilities that perform abortions, support women entering motherhood with new healthcare reforms, and penalize those who illegally distribute abortion-inducing drugs and break any new healthcare standards,” Berger said in a press release.

The bill includes criminal provisions that make it a Class D felony with a $250,000 fine for physicians who don’t medically assist babies after a failed procedure.

Anyone caught supplying or illegally advertising abortion-inducing drugs is subject to a $5,000 fine.

“The criminal punishment for assaults on pregnant women will be increased, the misdemeanor crime of domestic violence will be created, and the 10-year GPS monitoring for certain repeat and violent sexual offenders will be bumped up to lifetime monitoring,” Berger said.

Berger pointed to a poll that showed 57 percent of North Carolinians support the legislation that would ban abortion after the first trimester.

The bill’s main sponsor, state Sen. Joyce Krawiec, called the bill a beginning to “the process of creating a culture that values life.”

Cooper, however, disagreed, calling it Republican overreach that—in alluding to the reversal of Roe v. Wade—erodes “even further the freedom of women and their doctors to make deeply personal health care decisions.”