Nebraska ban on gender-affirming care and abortion heads to final vote
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Amid fierce debate and protests, Nebraska lawmakers on Tuesday revived a less restrictive version of an abortion ban that failed last month, tacking it onto a measure banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight The abortion measure would ban the procedure at 12 weeks gestation, making exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother. It provides no exceptions for fatal fetal anomalies and doesn’t explicitly protect doctors who perform abortions from criminal prosecution.
Supporters of the bill in the unicameral, 49-member legislature needed 33 votes to advance the amended bill. They got them after about five hours of procedural wrangling once Republican state Sen. Merv Riepe — the lone holdout who sank a proposed six-week abortion ban last month — switched to support the amended measure, which appears headed for a final vote Friday and approval by the Republican governor. The state currently bans abortion after 20 weeks.
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The transgender bill would ban gender-reassignment surgery for anyone 18 and younger, and it would give the state’s chief medical officer — an ear, nose and throat doctor appointed by the Republican governor — authority over hormone treatments for transgender minors.
Restrictions on abortion and transgender people have been consistent targets of conservatives in state legislatures this year, with Republican lawmakers considering a slew of proposals across the country.
State Sen. Ben Hansen (R), a chiropractor, called the amended bill a “compromise” that resulted from “extensive conversations” with supporters and “listening sessions” with opponents.
“Even though they may not view it as a compromise, we did our best to move it forward within reason,” he said.
“Both deal with the matter of life, particularly children,” Hansen successfully argued during Tuesday’s debate when Democrats tried to block the amendment procedurally. He noted that both measures concern laws covering medicine and both came out of the legislature’s health committee, which he chairs.
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State Sen. Kathleen Kauth, an Omaha Republican who proposed the transgender bill, said the amended version would protect children from “social contagion.”
“Kids deserve the right to grow up and not deal with this until they are adults and can make informed decisions,” she said during the debate.
Before the vote, protesters gathered in the hall outside, waving signs and chanting so loudly that the legislature’s Republican president directed staff to close the doors “for the preservation of the transcript.” Lawmakers opposing the amended bill persuaded Republican leaders not to expel protesters from the building, said state Sen. Megan Hunt, a nonpartisan legislator. Later, security cleared the gallery when protesters started chanting there.
Hunt started to cry as she listened to protesters.
“They’re chanting ‘One more vote to save our lives,’” she said during the debate, insisting the bill would imperil transgender children, parents’ rights and pregnant people with fetal anomalies. She challenged conservative colleagues who had championed parents’ rights in opposing vaccinations during the coronavirus pandemic.
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“What is wrong with you?” Hunt said. She called the merged bill “a desperate attempt to institute an abortion ban that is unpopular, unnecessary, and unsafe” by piggybacking it onto the transgender measure.
Hunt faces a conflict-of-interest complaint filed by an Omaha lawyer for opposing the transgender measure because of her 12-year-old transgender son. She said before the vote that her son “knows that whatever happens, he will be safe.”
But she added, “What we’re worried about is other kids who don’t have affirming families and people who will not be able to access the standard of care.” For many, she said, travel to states where such treatments are still legal isn’t a solution.
“No one in a state that has banned care is hoofing it to California, for example, and then engaging in a relaxed, slow process of discerning the most helpful treatment path forward,” she said, insisting the transgender treatment ban “should fail in order to ensure a Nebraska where everyone belongs.”
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Nebraska conservatives initially proposed a bill to ban abortion after fetal cardiac activity is detected, usually at about six weeks of pregnancy, but failed to break the opponents’ filibuster because Riepe’s single vote last month effectively tabled the measure.
Last week, antiabortion lawmakers crafted a new proposal based on Riepe’s suggestions to ban abortion at 12 weeks and attached it to the transgender bill, a compromise they hoped would win them the 33 votes needed to overcome opponents’ filibuster on Tuesday.
Riepe submitted an amendment last month that also made exceptions for fatal fetal anomalies and protected doctors who perform abortions from criminal prosecution. Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, Riepe said he had told the governor and Republican colleagues that his hard line was 12 weeks, so he felt mostly satisfied with the new bill.
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“I’m pleased to get 12 weeks. Still, I would like to have more protections for physicians,” he said. “In this process, we’ve managed to make nobody happy. When neither side is perfectly happy, then you have a pretty good bill.”
“Most Nebraskans feel 12 weeks is a reasonable compromise,” he said during floor debate, calling the abortion ban “legally defensible” and asking colleagues to work with him next session to ensure doctors don’t face criminal penalties.
Riepe said he would have preferred the abortion ban not be coupled with another contentious social issue. He acknowledged having mixed feelings about the transgender measure, but said, “Anything that is irreversible for a young person, I have a problem with.”
“I hope that I can defend my position and the conclusion that’s been thrown at me,” he said. “… When it comes down to the nay-and-yea vote, you just have to do it.”
Abortion opponents also had mixed feelings about the amended bill.
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Sandy Danek, executive director of Nebraska Right to Life, said she was “extremely disappointed” that the six-week ban didn’t pass and “caught off-guard” by Riepe’s refusal to vote for it. She noted that most abortions in Nebraska — and in the United States — occur before 12 weeks.
“Those babies with a beating heart will not be protected,” Danek said, although she said she was “encouraged, and all pro-life Nebraskans should be encouraged that their senators are so motivated.”
Danek said it made sense to combine the 12-week ban with the transgender bill.
“We’re talking about life-changing events for minor children,” she said of treating transgender youths.
Hunt, however, said the transgender measure delegated too much “authority to an unelected, appointed individual.”
“It is wrong to let one unelected person make such profound decisions, particularly when that person has no training, experience, expertise on the subject,” she said.
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When the Republican-dominated health committee introduced the transgender bill in February, state Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh (D) began a marathon 12-week filibuster of every bill before the legislature in an attempt to kill it. The bill survived two rounds of debate by a single vote.
During Tuesday’s debate, Cavanaugh and other Democrats repeatedly attempted to delay a vote on procedural grounds, accusing Republican leaders of changing legislative rules to force the measure through.
“This is not how good public policy is made. This is beneath the Nebraska legislature,” Cavanaugh said, faulting proponents for “disingenuous, bad faith negotiations.”
“This is just a game to many people in this chamber,” she said.
The combined bill will face a final round of debate before it is expected to pass, perhaps as soon as Friday, according to a spokesman for Republican Speaker John Arch. It would take effect as soon as it is signed by Republican Gov. Jim Pillen, who supports the measure, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.
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Source: The Washington Post
