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NC Senate again passes 'born alive' abortion bill

Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed this bill in 2019, and the math hasn't changed much since then for a possible override.

Posted Updated

By
Travis Fain
, WRAL statehouse reporter
RALEIGH, N.C. — Senate Republicans again passed legislation Tuesday to require doctors to try to save any child born alive after a botched abortion.
Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed this bill in 2019, saying the law already protects newborns and that the bill would "criminalize doctors and other health care providers for a practice that simply does not exist."

Republican lawmakers dispute all of that, saying killing is a criminal offense, but nothing in state law requires doctors to care for newborns in these rare situations.

Sen. Joyce Krawiec, R-Forsyth, who sponsored the bill both times, argues that the bill doesn't restrict abortions, it protects newborns.

"By all definitions, [they're] a living, breathing human being – a person, a citizen," Krawiec said.

"This bill does absolutely nothing, nothing, to limit a woman's access to health care," she said. "It does not come between a woman and her doctor."

Democrats see the bill as a clever way to challenge Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

"This bill is out of a national playbook," Sen. Natalie Murdock, D-Durham, said Tuesday. "It does not address an actual problem that exists in the state. ... Physicians are obligated by medical ethics and licensing regulations."

Murdock said the bill is another Republican attempt to "demonize and stigmatize" abortion providers and the women who seek abortions.

Senate Bill 405 passed the Senate Tuesday evening on a 28-21 party-line vote, much as it did in 2019. It moves now to the House, where it's expected to pass. But, just as in 2019, Republicans don't have the numbers to override, should Cooper veto it again.

The only difference in the legislation this year: Instead of a felony, a doctor who violates the bill's edicts would be guilty of a misdemeanor.

The bill says infants born alive after an abortion should have "the same claim to the protection of the law that would arise for any newborn" and that doctors must "exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as a reasonably diligent and conscientious health care practitioner would render to any other child born alive at the same gestational age."

The bill would also require anyone who knows of a violation to report it to the authorities.

The measure is one of two abortion bills moving through the lawmaking process in Raleigh. The other would make it illegal to get an abortion specifically because of the presumed race of the fetus or because of a Down syndrome diagnosis, and it would require doctors performing abortions to confirm neither of those is the intent before beginning the procedure.

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