Journalists’ Roundtable: 4-07-23

April 7, 2023

What’s the count of vetos for the week and session?

“For the week, that makes 18 and then 38 thus far. I don’t know what the Governor’s middle name is, but I do think it could be veto. She is using that stamp a whole lot,” said Pitzl.

A big one had an abortion related theme, “This was the ‘Born Alive Bill’ that passed the legislator on mostly party lines votes, I think they picked up one Democrat vote in the House. It would require doctors to provide efforts to resuscitate, or to keep alive, a child who’s been born maybe prematurely, that probably doesn’t have much of a chance of making it, but to make every do effort,” said Pitzl.

Was the Republican response, “Look at what the Governor just did?”

“Throughout the legislative process they have had a lot of opportunities to present some evidence that maybe there were negative medical outcomes as a result of not having this kind of law. We didn’t see that in the process as it moved through the legislature, so I’m not sure how genuine that outrage is. They certainly saw this as a moment to highlight the Governor’s position on this issue, that is incredibly divisive,” said Phillips.

It was noted that Kari Lake put out a press release on this specific veto.

Did the governor say it was not the state’s role to make these decisions?

“What this will come down to is if a baby is born prematurely, or with some sort of severe medical defect, presumably the mother and doctor they’re going to have the child’s interest at heart. These are instances where they are going to be looking for what are these baby’s prospects, what are the chances, can we keep this baby alive? I don’t know that we heard any evidence during this debate that this was a problem where babies were being born with this condition and people weren’t trying to keep them alive. We already have a law in the books passed by six years ago for children who are born alive during abortion attempts,” said Duda.