Did Cooper Just Seal His 2020 Reelection Fate with ‘Born Alive’ Veto?

RALEIGH – Democrat Governor Roy Cooper has done plenty since being elected in 2016 to earn the ire of a majority of North Carolina voters, but last week may have been the final nail in his political coffin.

The N.C. General Assembly passed the Born Alive Act last week, a bill that would require abortion doctors provide a minimal level of medical care to babies that survive abortions or face criminal charges. In other words, if a bay is born alive after an abortion attempt, the provider would be legally required to give the baby the same care as any other new born would receive.

Pretty straight forward common sense, right? Cooper vetoed it.

“Laws already protect newborn babies, and this bill is an unnecessary interference between doctors and their patients,” Cooper said in his veto statement. “This needless legislation would criminalize doctors and other health care providers for a practice that simply does not exist.”

If the practice doesn’t exist then what would those doctors and healthcare providers be worried about? If it does exist, then all the more reason to ensure these babies get the care they deserve.

Even though Cooper has demonstrated his loyalty to the Radical Left time and again, it is still surprising that he would veto a bill such as this. A couple of Republican members of the state legislature reacted as you might expect to the news of Cooper’s veto.

“Caring for a living, breathing newborn infant is too restrictive for Governor Cooper’s radical abortion agenda,” bill sponsors Sen. Joyce Krawiec, (R-Forsyth) and Rep. Pat McElraft (R-Carteret) said in a joint statement. “We thought Democrats would agree that children born alive should be separate from the abortion debate, but it’s clear that they want the ‘right to choose’ to even extend past birth. This is a sad day for North Carolina.”

Cooper had some choices here, politically speaking. He could have simply refused to sign the bill and have it become law without his signature; he could have signed the bill and demonstrated his ability to discern between partisan battles and the moral question of protecting new born babies; or he could cater to the Far Left contingent of his voting base and vetoed the bill. He chose the latter, obviously, and thus confirmed his true priorities.

Statewide, North Carolina may not be deep red from end to end, but I’d be willing to bet that a great majority of North Carolinians believe that the babies born alive after an attempted abortion deserve the same care that any other newborn baby would receive. The alternative is to discount human life to the greatest degree. Cooper’s veto is a vote for that alternative, and likely the final act in declaring that he is completely out of step with the people of this great state.