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In a rare defeat for anti-abortion activists in the South, Republicans in North Carolina failed Wednesday to veto a bill that would have made it a crime not to treat "any child born living after an abortion ".
Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, rejected the Senate bill a few days after it was passed by the two houses held by Republicans in April, pointing out that the measure constituted "unnecessary interference between doctors and their patients" and would have criminalized a "practice that does not exist."
Doctors are already subject to a 2002 federal law that protects fetuses who survive an abortion. In a statement on Wednesday, Cooper reiterated his position that the bill, called the Born-Alive Survivor Protection Act, was redundant.
"It is important to protect the lives of all children and laws already exist to protect newborns," Cooper said. "Instead of passing useless laws for political purposes, we need to go through conflicting social issues and focus on the needs of North Carolina families: education, health care, and well-paying jobs."
The attempted waiver at North Carolina House failed after a vote of 67-53, just under the three-fifths majority required to void Mr. Cooper's veto. The Senate of the State voted in April to cancel the governor.
This year, in the country's state palaces, a number of Republican-majority states have adopted anti-abortion measures, many of which would ban this procedure as soon as health care providers are able to to detect the pulsations of what would become the heart of a fetus, which could be as early as six weeks of pregnancy. Alabama has approved a law last month banning almost all abortions in the state.
Wednesday's failure to cancel Cooper's veto was one of the most dramatic consequences of the Democratic Legislative victories won in North Carolina last November, which broke Republican supermajorities in both chambers and facilitated the survival of Mr. Cooper's vetoes. These victories also represented a subtle but important shift in the balance of power in favor of Cooper, whose victory in November 2016 was the first crack in the Republic's almost total control of state politics.
Those who supported Senate Bill 359 stated that this measure was an important means of controlling potential infanticide. The law stipulated that "if an abortion results in the live birth of a baby, the baby is a legal person" and is entitled to protection under the North Carolina law. Penalties for non-treatment after an unsuccessful abortion would have been a maximum fine of $ 250,000 and potential prosecution under state murder laws.
The office of the Speaker of the House, Tim Moore, said in a statement issued on Wednesday that the failure of the attempted waiver was the "final vote" on the issue. Mr. Moore added that the Democrats had "managed to prevent the duty of care to all those who lived and breathed the North Carolinians born alive in the state".
The Democrats, in turn, accused Moore of rudimentary tactics that were unworthy, accusing him of scheduling the vote at a time when a Democratic legislator was recovering from a mastectomy.
The North Carolina bill was similar to a federal measure that Democratic senators had blocked earlier this year. Health professionals at the time said the federal bill would have brought new complications, including the death of the mother and the fetus.
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