By Julia Harte and Joseph Ax
(Reuters) – North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature on Thursday passed a bill limiting most abortions to the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, a sharp drop from the state’s current limit of 20 weeks’ gestation.
The state Senate approved the bill 29-20 along party lines, a day after the state House of Representatives passed it in a similar party-line vote.
The measure now heads to Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, who has vowed to veto it. But Republicans have a supermajority in both chambers, thanks to a formerly Democratic lawmaker who switched parties in April, and can override Cooper’s veto if all Republicans support it.
If the bill becomes law, it would hinder women who have been traveling to North Carolina for abortions from nearby conservative Southern states that banned or strictly limited the procedure after the U.S. Supreme Court last year overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling establishing federal abortion rights.
Democrats and abortion rights supporters slammed the bill’s Republican backers for bringing it to a vote in the House less than 24 hours after introducing it late Tuesday night, precluding the lengthier analysis and debate that would usually happen around such legislation.
(Reporting by Julia Harte and Joseph Ax; Editing by Colleen Jenkins)
