Gov. Roy Cooper (D) held a ceremony outdoors where a crowd chanted veto and cheered as he vetoed a Republican-passed 12-week abortion ban in North Carolina.
Here is a clip of the crowd cheering as Gov. Cooper vetoed the bill:
The moment Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed a Republican 12-week abortion ban in North Carolina. pic.twitter.com/rolQX7UFxx
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) May 13, 2023
In his remarks, Cooper said, “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 on women’s health. Let’s be clear: This bill has nothing to do with making women safer and everything to do with banning abortion.”
A Meredith College Poll found:
While over half of our respondents wanted to keep North Carolina’s current law about abortion access (20 weeks) or expand it, over one-third of voters, want to restrict access to abortion even further or ban access completely. A plurality of respondents (30.9%) wants to keep the current law.
The division over abortion law is entirely partisan. Over three-quarters of Democrats want to keep the current law untouched or expand abortion access, while almost 60 percent of Republicans want to further restrict access to abortions or ban access altogether. A majority of unaffiliated voters (59.3%) would prefer keeping the 20-week ban or expanding access further.
Overall, 57% of North Carolinians want to keep the current 20-week abortion law or expand access to abortion and 35% want abortion restrictions.
Republicans are being driven by their far-right fringe into a losing hand on abortion.
North Carolina Republicans have a supermajority in the state legislature, so they are planning to override the governor’s veto, but the GOP abortion position is so unpopular and toxic that Democratic governors can veto their abortion bans in public in front of cheering crowds.
Republicans aren’t listening, and they are going to pay for their abortion bans at the ballot box in 2024.