North Carolina governor slams state GOP for overturning his veto of their 12-week abortion ban

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper slammed Republicans in the general assembly for overturning his veto of their newly restrictive 12-week abortion law last week — and suggested the GOP could end up paying for it at the ballot box in 2024.

“It’s amazing how they’ve ignored the will of the people here,” the Democratic governor told Jonathan Capehart on MSNBC’s “The Saturday Show.” “Most North Carolinians do not want right-wing politicians in the exam room with women and their doctors. But Republicans are controlled by their right wing.”

It was last Saturday that Cooper announced his veto of SB20 at a rally in Raleigh, N.C. Standing behind a lectern emblazoned with the words “STOP THE BANS,” he challenged Republicans, particularly those who’d voiced tacit support for abortion rights while on the campaign trail, to defect from their party’s stance and vote with Democrats. Yes, the GOP had supermajorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives, but they were razor thin. A single flip in either chamber would have stopped the new abortion law from taking effect.

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.”