NC Senate votes to punish doctors who don’t try to save abortion survivors
For a second time, North Carolina’s Republican-majority legislature is moving to make it a crime for medical providers to not treat infants who survive abortion.
The Senate passed the legislation in a party-line vote Tuesday evening, but it’s likely to meet the same fate as a similar bill that failed two years ago.
Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed a “born alive” abortion bill in 2019, saying the legislation was unnecessary because laws already protect newborn babies. The legislature did not have enough support from Democratic lawmakers that year to override that veto.
If the legislature again passes the bill, Republicans would essentially force Cooper to veto a proposal that even some moderate Democrats have supported in the past. Any fractures in his party could weaken his efforts to advance his own budget priorities in the GOP-led legislature.
Republicans’ second attempt to criminalize doctors who don’t provide care to abortion survivors comes as a federal appeals court considers reinstating North Carolina’s ban on abortions after 20 weeks. Lawmakers are pushing to pass the legislation because they say more babies could be “born alive” if the law is not reinstated.
Sen. Joyce Krawiec, one of the main sponsors of the bill, said the legislation is “more important now than ever.”
“We’re going to have more and more babies that will be in that situation,” said Krawiec, a Republican from Kernersville.
The bill will likely pass North Carolina’s House, too, but is expected to again be met with a veto by Cooper. Though the legislature is majority-Republican, lawmakers may once again not have enough support from Democrats to meet the required three-fifths of support in each chamber to override the veto. Just 28 senators voted in favor of the legislation Monday night, while 21 voted against it.
The House passed a separate abortion bill last week that would restrict providers from terminating pregnancies because the fetus has Down syndrome. The bill would also protect against abortions because of race or sex. Six Democrats voted in favor of the legislation.
Democrats and abortion advocates say that the premise of the legislation is flawed, as doctors aren’t killing babies who survive abortion. They also say the bill would stigmatize reproductive health care and intimidate those who provide abortions.
“The language of this bill is not based in medical science,” said Planned Parenthood public affairs director Susanna Birdsong, “and implies that medical professionals are performing infanticide.”
One study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that few survive abortions. Between 2003 and 2014, 143 fetuses survived of 49 million births, but most lived for just a few hours.
This year’s bill is a slightly watered-down version of what Cooper vetoed in 2019, as it makes the offense of not caring for an abortion survivor a misdemeanor, rather than a felony. That change could bring some additional lawmakers to support the legislation, but likely not enough to override a gubernatorial veto.
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This story was originally published May 11, 2021 at 5:20 PM.
