Republicans held firm, overturning Cooper’s veto days later.
“Not a single Republican stepped up,” Cooper told Capehart. “Not a single Republican kept a campaign promise to protect women’s reproductive freedom like they said they would. And therefore, you have unified Republicans who are altogether in an assault on women’s reproductive freedom.”
The new law, set to take effect on July 1, bans most abortions in North Carolina at 12 weeks, a sharp decrease from the 20-week ban currently in place throughout the state. Republicans have sought to cast the measure as moderate, with extensions in place in cases of rape or incest at 20 weeks and 24 weeks in the event of a “life-limiting fetal anomaly.” The new law isn’t as restrictive as abortion measures recently passed in either Florida or South Carolina.
But Cooper wasn’t swayed, arguing that it took Republicans in his state just “42 hours to turn back the clock 50 years.” The issue, he said, would be “front and center” in the 2024 elections.
“In North Carolina, I told the President, I believe that we can win North Carolina for him,” Cooper said. “We’ll be electing a new Democratic governor to take office in January of 2025. And we’re gonna work hard to break the supermajority in the North Carolina legislature.”