Nebraska abortion hearing draws crowd
Hundreds gather for heartbeat bill debate
LINCOLN, Neb. — Hundreds of people crowded the halls of the Nebraska state Capitol on Wednesday for a committee hearing on a socalled heartbeat bill.
The bill would ban abortions once cardiac activity can be detected in an embryo, which is generally around the sixth week of pregnancy.
“This bill is about one thing: protecting babies with beating hearts from elective abortion,” Republican Sen. Joni Albrecht, of Thurston, told the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee to kick off testimony on her bill Wednesday that drew scores of ban supporters, along with hundreds of opponents.
Lawmakers opposed to the ban have already attempted to throw up roadblocks to thwart the measure. Several attended a protest held in the Capitol rotunda just before Wednesday’s hearing that drew around 300 people opposed to the ban, including medical professionals and clergy.
Democratic Sen. Megan Hunt, of Omaha, who has been an outspoken opponent of restricting abortion rights, urged the crowd to continue to show up for each phase of the bill.
Hunt also led a push to move the bill out of the conservative-leaning HHS committee, where it is almost certain to be advanced, and into the more politically balanced Judiciary Committee.
But that effort failed in a vote on the legislative floor last week, with backers of the ban countering that the bill does not include criminal penalties for women who receive abortions or doctors who perform them.
Instead, it would subject doctors who perform outlawed abortions to professional discipline, which could include losing their medical licenses.
While the bill doesn’t list criminal penalties, it would make doctors vulnerable to criminal charges under existing state law, several lawmakers said. That law makes it a felony to perform an abortion not allowed under state law.
Democrats in Nebraska’s officially nonpartisan, one-house legislature hold 17 of the body’s 49 seats, which would again leave abortion ban backers short of a supermajority.
But abortion rights proponents have acknowledged that the alliance behind last year’s filibuster may not hold now that the ban includes exceptions for rape and incest.