Pete Ricketts, Nebraska's junior U.S. senator and former governor who in 2022 voiced support for a total abortion ban in the state including in cases of rape and incest, is now backing an effort to enshrine a 12-week abortion ban in the state's constitution.
Ricketts last month donated $500,000 to the Protect Women and Children committee, which launched a ballot initiative in March aimed at amending the state's constitution to bar most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy with exceptions for rape, incest and medical emergencies — a proposal that mirrors the abortion parameters that already exist in state law.
His donation accounted for 100% of the committee's cash balance as of March 26, when the filing period for the group's initial campaign finance disclosure form ended.
The effort is meant to rival a ballot initiative backed by abortion rights advocates generally considered to be around 23 or 24 weeks gestational age.
Organizers launched that effort late last year after Nebraska's Legislature in May passed a bill that restricted access to abortion in the state from 20 weeks post-fertilization to 12 weeks based on gestational age. Lawmakers passed the bill less than a month after of breaking a filibuster.
"I believe that life begins at conception and what we ought to do is do as much as possible to protect as many babies as possible," Ricketts said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday morning.
"In Nebraska, we — years ago — had the first ban on abortion at 20 weeks and the Legislature recently moved that down to 12 weeks, which frankly is in line with most countries around the world that are taking steps to protect babies."
He suggested the Protect Our Rights campaign to enshrine abortion access until fetal viability is an "abortion lobby" effort to "allow anybody who is a medical professional to make a judgment on the viability of that baby" and, if passed, would "reduce protections for babies."
"I support protecting more babies and that's why I support the Protect Women and Children ballot initiative," Ricketts added.
His financial support for the campaign seeking to enshrine Nebraska's 12-week abortion ban marks a reversal for the former governor and reflects the changing politics surrounding abortion both in the state and across the country.
After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, voters in more than a half-dozen states — including in traditionally conservative states such as Ohio, Kansas, Kentucky and Montana — have either affirmed abortion access or turned back attempts to further restrict abortion access.
The unpopularity of near and total abortion bans across the country has left Republican candidates and office-holders searching for political safe ground as anti-abortion advocacy groups and religious conservatives .
Former President Donald Trump, who has taken credit for the reversal of Roe v. Wade, faced fierce criticism from anti-abortion advocates including former Vice President Mike Pence earlier this month on abortion access going forward.
In Arizona, Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake last week virtually outlawing abortion, calling the court's ruling "out of step with Arizonans.†She had praised the 160-year-old measure as "a great law" in 2022.
And in Nebraska, establishment Republicans including Ricketts and Gov. Jim Pillen have rallied around the effort to enshrine the state's 12-week ban after previously signaling support for further restrictions on abortion.
In a statement last month, Pillen said the ballot initiative to enshrine the 12-week ban would "preserve our commonsense limits on abortion" — less than a year after he had called the state's 12-week ban "unacceptable," .
But on Wednesday, Ricketts threw his support firmly behind the effort to enshrine Nebraska's 12-week ban that he is funding.
"Twelve weeks is protecting more babies, so I support 12 weeks versus what we have, the 20 weeks," Ricketts said Wednesday, apparently referring to Nebraska's prior limits, which are no longer state law.
"And the abortion lobby's ballot initiative would actually remove those protections, and so what I want to do is make sure that we've got what the Legislature passed, those 12 weeks, is what we keep in the state of Nebraska because it's doing more to protect babies."
Organizers for both ballot initiatives will need to collect signatures from 10% of Nebraska’s registered voters to get the would-be amendments on the ballot in November — a total that will require about 123,000 voter signatures, including 5% of registered voters in at least 38 of Nebraska’s 93 counties.
Every successful petition or referendum effort for the past decade has spent $1.5 million or more on gathering signatures and campaigning.
In the group's latest campaign finance filing, Protect Our Rights reported having $226,869 in cash on hand after already spending $660,814 this year.
The coalition's biggest financial backers include Planned Parenthood Advocates of Nebraska, the ACLU of Nebraska and Nebraska Appleseed's political action arm, all of which have donated more than $100,000 each to the campaign, including more than $225,000 from Planned Parenthood.
Sen. Pete Ricketts speaks at an event at the Embassy Suites in La Vista in 2022. Ricketts, who once voiced support for a total abortion ban without exceptions, donated $500,000 last month to a ballot initiative campaign aimed at enshrining Nebraska's 12-week abortion ban in the state's constitution.