Abortion rights advocates in Nebraska who are launching a ballot initiative campaign this week are seeking to enshrine "a fundamental right to abortion until fetal viability" into the state's constitution, according to proposed policy language made public Wednesday.
The language — initially by a coalition of advocates known as Protect Our Rights — will appear on petitions seeking to put the constitutional amendment before voters in November 2024.
The coalition leading the effort, which includes the ACLU of Nebraska, I Be Black Girl, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Nebraska, the Women's Fund of Omaha and Nebraska Appleseed, among others, plans to formally launch their petition drive Thursday in Omaha.
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Advocates will need to collect signatures from 10% of Nebraska’s registered voters to get the would-be amendment on the ballot next November — a total that will require about 122,000 authorized signatures, including 5% of registered voters in at least 38 of Nebraska’s 93 counties.
The proposed policy language does not set a specific timeline for when abortion would be illegal under the amendment but defines fetal viability as "the point in pregnancy when, in the professional judgment of the patient’s treating health care practitioner, there is a significant likelihood of the fetus’ sustained survival outside the uterus without the application of extraordinary medical measures."
If it reaches the ballot and is approved by voters, the amendment would also ensure abortions are available "when needed to protect the life or health of the pregnant patient, without interference from the state or its political subdivisions."
"This amendment will ensure that these personal decisions stay with Nebraskans — not politicians," Ashlei Spivey, a member of Protect Our Rights’ executive committee and executive director of I Be Black Girl, said in a statement Wednesday.
The proposed policy invokes similar language as the constitutional amendment that allows the state to regulate abortion only after fetal viability, which is generally considered to be six months of pregnancy or about 22-24 weeks gestation.
The proposed language prompted immediate backlash from Gov. Jim Pillen and his conservative allies in the Legislature, who in April voted 33-15 to pass a bill that restricted access to abortion in the state to 12 weeks based on gestational age. State law previously allowed abortions up until 20 weeks post-fertilization.
"Bottom line: it's very vague, it's very open," Pillen told reporters Wednesday, suggesting "fetal viability" could be defined "a lot of different ways."
"I'm gonna fight it with every ounce of energy that I have because what it will lead to, if enacted, it will lead to doctors deciding — women deciding, doctors deciding whether a baby being born at 39 weeks can live or not," he said.
"We are a pro-life state. There's no Nebraskans that are gonna support that petition and we're gonna make sure they understand the truth of the language in it."
State Sen. Joni Albrecht of Thurston, who proposed a six-week ban that was narrowly blocked in the Legislature this year before the body ultimately passed the 12-week ban, called the petition language "extreme" and said current law already provides exceptions for the life of the mother and medical emergencies throughout pregnancy.
"An amendment that jeopardizes the health and safety of women and abandons babies who deserve love and protection to painful late-term abortion procedures must be rejected," she said in a press release.
A coalition of anti-abortion advocates called the Nebraska Pro-Life Coalition, which is made up of Nebraska Right to Life, the Nebraska Catholic Conference, the Nebraska Family Alliance and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, lodged similar objections in a joint statement Wednesday.Â
Abortion rights advocates have framed the issue as unpolitical, pointing to the success of the abortion rights ballot initiative last week in Ohio — the seventh state where voters have decided to protect abortion access in the months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022  — as evidence that the fight over abortion access is not an inherently political issue.
But the looming ballot initiative campaign in Nebraska will nonetheless pit advocates against Pillen and his political allies who championed the passing of the state's 12-week ban in April.
Those restrictions, which took effect immediately, have been challenged in court, so far unsuccessfully. The legal challenge — currently pending in the Nebraska Supreme Court — claims the law violated the state Constitution’s single-subject rule because the bill that put the restrictions into place also banned gender-affirming surgeries for minors.
±Ê¾±±ô±ô±ð²ÔÌý at conception in Nebraska, indicating their push to restrict access to the procedure won't stop with bans at 12 or even six weeks.
Advocates, though, hope to halt further restrictions and reverse those already in place.
“Unlike the state officials working to totally ban abortion, we're elevating the voices and lived experiences of Nebraskans who believe that pregnant people should be able to access needed care with compassion and privacy, free from political interference," Spivey said in her statement Wednesday.
She said the amendment is "informed both by medical experts and where most Nebraskans are on this issue."
The group's filings with Secretary of State Bob Evnen's office list three formal sponsors of the proposed amendment: Dr. Andy Robertson, an Elkhorn-based maternal and fetal medicine specialist; Dr. Carolyn Maud Doherty, an OB-GYN in Omaha, and Jasmine Smith, a birth and postpartum pregnancy loss support provider who also lives in Omaha.
The coalition has commissioned a poll to test Nebraskans' view on the issue but haven't published results of that effort.
Campaign finance reports the group filed with the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission indicate the Washington, D.C.-based organization The Fairness Project paid a California polling firm nearly $54,000 to conduct the poll on behalf of the Nebraska coalition.
Protect Our Rights' latest campaign finance statement, which the group filed in late October, suggests that it has around $43,000 in cash on hand and has so far been funded primarily by the ACLU of Nebraska, which gave $25,000 to the coalition in September and again in October.