North Carolina’s legislature upheld Gov. Roy Cooper’s (D) veto of an anti-abortion bill Wednesday afternoon.
Only this year — after the 2018 midterms — did Democrats have enough seats in the legislature to end the GOP’s supermajority in the statehouse, which had previously given Republicans the votes to override Cooper’s vetoes.
The successful veto from Cooper comes after other states in the South have rushed to pass extreme anti-abortion laws.
The North Carolina legislation, dubbed the “Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act,” sought to make it a crime for doctors and nurses to not offer care to infants who are born alive after unsuccessful abortions.
Cooper’s veto message said that the bill would “criminalize” a practice “that simply does not exist.” He said it was “needless,” because other laws exist protecting newborns, and that it was an “interference between doctors and their patients.”
