“N.C. Dems Say GOP Is Exploiting Lawmaker’s Breast Cancer To Push Anti-Abortion Bill” blares Alanna Vagianos’ headline.
This asinine caterwauling is what you get when a reporter who knows little to nothing about North Carolina politics fires up the Stenotype and calls a few Democrats.
The Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act is not an anti-abortion bill. It’s not even an abortion bill. It’s a bill that says doctors can’t leave a child to die of neglect just because Planned Parenthood failed to kill him in the womb. It’s a bill that says Kermit Gosnell is an abomination, not an inspiration.
And if it’s a “medically and legally unnecessary” fix “for a practice that simply does not exist,” it can’t also be “an extreme anti-abortion bill.” It can’t be both an attack on women’s rights and a pointless bill that does nothing other than rile up the base.
Vagianos says “it’s medically nearly impossible for infants to be born alive during late-term abortions.” She says nearly because she knows it happens. In Florida, where statistics on infants born alive during botched abortions have been collected since the state passed its own version of the act, there were 11 cases in 2017, 6 in 2018, and there have already been 2 cases in 2019.
Senate Bill 359 requires medical providers to give these children the same level of care they would be expected to provide for any other infant.
But if facts aren’t on your side, whine about the process instead.
State Reps. Sydney Batch, Ashton Clemmons and Darren Jackson told HuffPost that some of their colleagues across the aisle are trying to force through the “Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act” by repeatedly delaying a veto vote override in the state House. … They say Moore keeps pulling the vote in hopes that enough Democrats will eventually be absent so that GOP members can successfully override Cooper’s veto.
Grow up, buttercup. Even if you’re right, Republicans learned this tactic from the Democrats who ruled the legislature with an iron fist for more than a century.
As just one example: scheduling games are exactly how North Carolina got the lottery. The Democrats didn’t even have enough support from their own caucus to pass the bill, so they waited until two Republican opponents were out of town, called the legislature back to Raleigh, and used the Lt. Governor to cast a tie-breaker vote.
That bill became law on the basis of a 24-24 vote despite bi-partisan opposition. The Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act passed the House 65-46 with bi-partisan support.
But I guess it’s simply asking too much to expect a Huffington Post reporter who can’t even get the partisan breakdown of the legislature right to know anything about the state’s legislative history.
Since the 2018 election, North Carolina Democrats have held a supermajority in the state. Although Republicans hold the majority in the House (65 out of the 120 caucus members), they would need 60 percent of the legislative body, or 72 votes, to override Cooper.
Democrats do not hold a super majority, or even a majority, in either chamber of the North Carolina General Assembly. North Carolina voters sent Republican majorities to both the House and Senate in 2018. Yes, North Carolina “voted for Democrats to have a voice” in the legislature in 2018; they also voted for Republicans to have a bigger voice.
