Targeting Regional Abortion Safe Havens
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With Roe finally overruled, opponents of legal abortion can focus on their core goal of making sure that pregnant women and new parents have access to healthcare and paid le.. Hahahaha, no, sorry, they’re maintaining their sole focus on using state coercion to compel as many women to carry pregnancies to term as possible:
In the months after the fall of Roe v. Wade, North Carolina experienced the largest spike in abortions of any state — its numbers fueled by a relatively permissive law and a Democratic governor promising to block the Republican-led legislature from enacting antiabortion measures.
But in recent weeks hard-liners in Raleigh have launched a plan to override a future veto and ban abortions as soon as around six weeks of pregnancy.
At the center of the effort are a handful of Democratic legislators with a history of voting for antiabortion legislation and who could now provide the GOP with enough votes to override a veto by Gov. Roy Cooper (D). That group, which includes two pastors of predominantly Black Baptist churches, is facing pressure from both sides.
“I lay down with it, I wake up with it,” said state Rep. Garland Pierce (D), who leads the congregation at Bright Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Laurinburg, N.C. “When you reach deep down you want to be sure you’re doing the right thing.”
The showdown in North Carolina reflects similar efforts underway in several conservative states that have become destinations for post-Roe abortion care. In Florida and Nebraska — where laws still allow the vast majority of abortions to continue — conservatives are also pushing for six-week bans, which, together with the same kind of ban in North Carolina, could dramatically reshape the national abortion landscape once again.
Florida is an interesting case, as it would be a huge blow to DeSantis as a potential presidential candidate in a general election to pass a near-total ban, but Florida Republicans almost certainly care about making as many women as possible suffer more than they care about his presidential ambitions, and he’ll definitely sign whatever anti-abortion measures are put on his desk.
Meanwhile, in North Carolina, there’s a chance of overriding a gubernatorial veto because the state legislature has abrogated democratic legislative elections in the state and the Supreme Court is fine with that.