“The National Model for How to Lose Elections”: North Carolina Republicans Pass 12-Week Abortion Ban, Overriding Governor’s Veto

North Carolina’s Republican-led legislature has officially passed a 12-week abortion ban, after overturning Governor Roy Cooper’s veto. The Tuesday night vote served as a stunning final act to what has been a closely watched clash between Cooper, a Democrat, and North Carolina Republicans over the bill—including a recent Democrat-to-Republican convert, who, despite a long pro-abortion-rights record, voted for the ban. The conclusion—a cut to abortion access for not only North Carolinians, but also for the many women in neighboring states with even harsher restrictions—has re-emboldened Democrats nationally to bring a blue wave to the state. 

“The dangerous antics by the North Carolina Republican Party are the national model for how to lose elections in 2023 and 2024,” Philip Shulman, a spokesperson for liberal super PAC American Bridge 21st Century, said. “As Republican legislators and the party’s top choice for governor, Mark Robinson, attack and take away people’s basic freedoms, voters have that much more reason to vote for Democrats up and down the ticket.”

“North Carolina is a battleground state for 2024,” Jesse Ferguson, a veteran Democratic strategist tweeted after the vote. “GOP candidate is gonna own this.”

Going into Tuesday’s vote, it was unclear whether Republicans could garner enough votes to trump Cooper’s opposition to the bill. “This is a very purple state, every battle is won or lost on a very tiny, tiny number of votes,” Jenny Black, the CEO and president of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, told Vanity Fair Monday evening. This played out the same way. The Senate voted 30 to 20 along party lines to override Cooper’s veto and the House also voted to override the veto in a final vote of 72 to 48; four Republicans who had previously said they did not favor tighter abortion restrictions supported the ban. 

“North Carolinians now understand that Republicans are unified in their assault on women’s reproductive freedom and we are energized to fight back on this and other critical issues facing our state,” Cooper said in a statement following the vote Tuesday night. 

The political calculus around abortion rights in North Carolina changed last month when House member Tricia Cotham defected from the Democratic ranks, providing Republicans with a slim supermajority. Previously an ardent supporter of abortion rights, Cotham voted for the 12-week ban. Her hypocrisy on the issue has been glaring. “My womb and my uterus is not up for your political grab,” she declared in a 2015 speech. Among the three other Republicans—House representatives Ted Davis and John Bradford, and state senator Michael Lee—who also staked out positions on the campaign trail against extreme abortion bans, two voted (Lee and Bradford) for the initial measure, and one (Davis) was absent. As Rolling Stone reported, just last year Bradford said he had “no intentions” of making North Carolina’s current 20-week abortion ban more restrictive. Similarly, in an op-ed, Lee staked out, “I am against bans in the first trimester.” And Davis said, “I believe in the [existing] law…. If a woman desires to have an abortion up to 20 weeks, which is the second trimester of pregnancy, she can have an abortion.” 

Cooper has served as a bulwark against North Carolina Republicans’ conservative agenda for years now; the Democratic governor has vetoed more than 75 pieces of legislation since he took office in 2017. His veto, which he issued Saturday in Raleigh to a crowd of hundreds, was expected. “Standing in the way of progress right now is this Republican supermajority legislature that only took 48 hours to turn the clock back 50 years,” Cooper said. The governor spent the last week campaigning in Republican districts to urge constituents to sway their elected leaders.

Black was hoping the political pressures would work. “November wasn’t that long ago,” she said ahead of Tuesday. Instead, this episode once again thrust North Carolina into Democrats’ purview nationally. A Democratic presidential candidate hasn’t won the state since Barack Obama in 2008 (Mitt Romney won the state in 2012). And despite Cooper’s victory in 2016 and hopes that Donald Trump’s drag on the GOP would help Democrats claim a Senate seat—or two—Republicans have held a mostly firm grasp on the state federally. Still, abortion has proven to be a salient issue for voters, even in much redder states than North Carolina. With that and Joe Biden’s wider appeal in southern states, Democrats appear to be more hopeful about their prospects. 

Republicans pitched the 12-week ban as something of a compromise on the abortion issue. For instance, Republican senator Phil Berger characterized the bill as “a mainstream approach to limiting elective abortions.” But Democrats and abortion rights activists have dismissed this line of argument. “Make no mistake: Your actions today will harm women,” Representative Julie von Haefen, a Democrat, said on the House floor. And a Meredith poll in February showed that 57% of respondents supported the state’s current 20-week ban or expanding access further.