Transcript: North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper on "Face the Nation," May 7, 2023

The following is the transcript of an interview with Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper that aired on "Face the Nation" on May 7, 2023.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Late last week, North Carolina's Republican led legislature passed a bill that would limit abortion access in the state. For more we want to go to the state's Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, who joins us from Raleigh. Good morning to you, Governor. 

GOVERNOR ROY COOPER: Good morning, Margaret.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Just to make it clear abortion is currently permitted up to 20 weeks of pregnancy in your state, this bill coming out of your legislature would bring it down to 12 weeks, which according to the CDC would still allow more than 90% of abortions to continue. Republicans say they're offering a middle ground here. Why do you think this bill is too restrictive?

GOV. COOPER: They've dressed this up as a 12 week ban, but it's really not. They ran through a bill in 48 hours with no public input, with no amendments that drastically reduces access to reproductive freedom for women. It'll effectively ban many abortions altogether, because of the obstacles that they have created for women, for clinics, and for doctors. They have tried to disguise the disastrous impacts of this bill, but we're going to expose them. This bill has nothing to do with making women safer, and everything to do with banning abortions. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well-

GOV. COOPER: We only need– 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, those just so our viewers can follow along with you here. The bill would cut it off at the end of the first trimester, roughly 12 weeks, there would be an allowance for abortion up to 20 weeks in case of rape or incest, 24 weeks if there are fetal abnormalities, but what you're talking about are requirements like number of times you have to visit a doctor,  information that a woman would have to share publicly.

GOV. COOPER: For sure. And also, in fact, for medication abortion, the bill specifically limits it to 10 weeks. And when for these additional requirements of three in person visits that doctors have said are medically unnecessary. With more requirements put on clinics that are already strained with four week backlogs of people, North Carolina has become an access point in the southeast. And what this legislation is going to do is going to prevent many women from getting abortions at any time during their pregnancy, because of the obstructions that they had put here. Many of these clinics are working very hard to treat women, and now they're going to have many new medically unnecessary requirements that I think many of them are going to have to close.

MARGARET BRENNAN: In North Carolina has become a haven in the south, because so many of your surrounding states have severely restricted access. I know that you have, and we're showing a map there just to show where you are at the moment, but you have vowed to veto this bill. But your state legislature has a supermajority that could override it. So what is your plan to stop them?

GOV. COOPER: Well, first, we only need one Republican to keep a promise. At least four Republican legislators made promises to their constituents during this campaign that they were going to protect women's reproductive freedom. They only have a supermajority by one vote in the Senate, and one vote in the House. And we've seen Republicans across the country step up. We saw them step up in South Carolina, we saw them step up in Nebraska, because they know that people don't want abortion bans. And that's what this bill is the more–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Why would they respond–

GOV. COOPER: people find out about– 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Why would they respond to your public calling out? Why do you think that would matter to them?

GOV. COOPER: Well, they don't have to answer to me, they have to answer to their constituents. So what I'm doing is trying to educate the public about the disaster that this bill is. And I'm gonna go into their districts, I'm gonna go into their districts this week, we're gonna have forums with doctors and advocates and women's women who care deeply about the restrictions in this legislation. And we're going to educate the public, but they kept this bill under lock and key. They wouldn't let their own members take a copy out. The public only saw it for 48 hours, it's 46 pages long. And it creates so many problems for women and clinics, that it's going to operate as an effective ban, and we're not going to we're not going to let them disguise this thing as something reasonable when it's not.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, I mean, compared to some of your surrounding states, 12 weeks is more permissive– 

GOV. COOPER: If it were 12 weeks, Margaret, but it's not. It's not a 12 week ban.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay. You don't have the votes though, to codify abortion access in the state of North Carolina. Why have Democrats– 

GOV. COOPER: No we do not.

MARGARET BRENNAN:  No  and so why have Democrats been so outmaneuvered on this issue? I mean, this just seems to be that even if you get rid of this bill, you're gonna have this fight again and again and again. So where's the compromise?

GOV. COOPER: The problem is we have super gerrymandered districts, and the Democrats are in a super minority. Every single Democrat has signed a bill to enact Roe v Wade standards. We're all standing together and fighting. And what we have to do now is defend ourselves from the right wing politicians who want to go into the exam room with women and their doctors. You know, these right wing politicians make crappy doctors, and they've gone in and defined medical terms, doctors are looking at this legislation and say, What in the world does that mean? So what we're going to do is call them out. Look there are four Republicans, four Republicans, who said they would protect women's reproductive freedom during the campaign. All we need is one of them. We can block this disastrous legislation, and then we can wait for the next battle. But what we're going to do is to continue to work to protect women's reproductive freedom in North Carolina.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Bbut you're just gonna be on the defensive there. So I mean, how does this actually get resolved? Or do you, can you hold a referendum? Can you do anything? If you say the public's with you? How do you find a compromise?

GOV. COOPER: We're not a referendum state.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.

GOV. COOPER: We have gerrymandered districts. So we have a Republican majority. Thank goodness, I'm a Democratic governor so I can rally the troops for four years. For four years, I have kept abortion legislation from becoming law that Republicans had passed. But in this election cycle, we lost. they gained a supermajority by one vote in each chamber. So now we're in a different position we- we've held that held the line for four years. But if we can get a Republican to say, look, this is not right. Like they did in South Carolina, like they did in Nebraska. And their constituents, the more they learn, the more they're going to demand that these Republican legislators step up.

MARGARET BRENNAN: All right, Governor, we'll leave it there. We'll be back in a moment.