Why NC Republicans aren’t planning to immediately try banning abortion

Republican legislators in North Carolina are not necessarily clamoring to quickly join other GOP-led states in fully outlawing abortion — even with the Supreme Court expected to overturn Roe v. Wade in the coming weeks and allow states to set stricter abortion rules than in the past.

Wednesday was the first day of the 2022 legislative session, which may only last a month or two, and N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters his main focus is going to be on the budget. Any attempts at passing further restrictions on abortion, he said, likely won’t happen until next year.

In part that’s because Republicans assume anything they try passing now would fail.

“The politics, frankly, is we have a governor who I know would veto any legislation,” Moore said. “And we don’t have a supermajority.”

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has indeed vetoed both of the two abortion-related bills that Republicans have passed during his time as governor. Each time, a handful of Democrats sided with the GOP on the bills. But Democrats have enough seats in the legislature that Republicans were nevertheless unable to gather enough votes to override Cooper’s vetoes and pass the bills into law.

Cooper won’t leave office until the start of 2025, so Republican lawmakers still have to deal with a Democratic veto threat for at least the next two-plus years. But if Republicans win enough races in this year’s midterms, the legislature would be able to override his vetoes.

That ups the stakes for this November’s elections for both parties. Do Republicans win back a supermajority at the legislature, or do Democrats hold onto enough seats to have leverage?

“Governor Cooper’s veto is the only thing preventing Republican lawmakers from eliminating safe and legal abortion in North Carolina,” Democratic Rep. Julie von Haefen of Apex said in an email. “... But that could all change in November. We’re a few flipped seats away from Republicans gaining a veto-proof supermajority.”

Historically, whichever party holds the White House — currently the Democratic Party — tends to do poorly in midterms. And if Republicans have a “red wave” election this November similar to the “blue wave” of 2018, then it’s possible the GOP could regain a supermajority and the ability to pass whatever the party wants into law, even if Cooper does try vetoing it.

But at the same time, Democrats are now hoping that Republican efforts to ban abortion post-Roe will backfire and help Democrats in the midterms. While highly popular with the GOP base, abortion bans are highly unpopular with the general public. Only about 19% of Americans think abortion should be illegal, Gallup found in a 2021 poll.

“North Carolinians need to know that their right to make a personal decision about when or if to access abortion care is on the ballot this fall,” von Haefen said.

Moore said that whenever North Carolina tackles the question of exactly what the rules should be here if Roe v. Wade is overturned, it will require a lot of debate and discussion.

A state law from several years ago banned abortions after 20 weeks, but it was quickly ruled unconstitutional due to Roe v. Wade, whose rules typically hold that women should have 24 to 26 weeks to make that decision.

So if Roe v. Wade is overturned, the 20-week ban would likely go back into effect in North Carolina.

But should the cutoff be changed to a different number of weeks, or even fully banned? Moore avoided getting into specifics of what he thought it should be.

“I’m solidly, consistently pro-life,” he said. “... Always have been, always will be. But that’s a piece of legislation that, if we start moving that, needs to be carefully thought through and looked at.”

For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at https://campsite.bio/underthedome or wherever you get your podcasts.