Nebraska Voters Pass Measure Limiting Abortions

Nebraska Voters Pass Measure Limiting Abortions

A competing ballot amendment, which would have established a right to abortion until fetal viability, failed to win more votes.

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By Kate Zernike

A ballot amendment prohibiting abortion beyond the first three months of pregnancy passed in Nebraska, according to The Associated Press, outpolling a competing measure that would have established a right to abortion until fetal viability.

The state was one of 10 with similar abortion ballot amendments this year, as abortion rights groups looked to capitalize on rising popular support for abortion in the two years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

But Nebraska was the only state where anti-abortion activists had sponsored their own measure to try to restrict abortion rights. State officials had said that even if both measures won a majority of votes, the amendment that received more would prevail.

The measure put forward by abortion rights groups would have protected a “fundamental right” to abortion until viability, the point in pregnancy when a fetus can survive outside the uterus, generally around 24 weeks. The state could have restricted or banned abortion after viability, except when needed to protect the life or health of the pregnant woman.

Opponents of abortion rights had tried and failed to collect enough signatures for a ballot amendment that would have banned abortion from conception. Instead, they sponsored the measure that won, which amends the State Constitution to say that “unborn children shall be protected from abortion in the second and third trimester,” except in cases of rape or incest, or if abortion is “necessitated by medical emergency.”

The sponsors of the winning measure said that the amendment would essentially affirm a law, passed by Nebraska lawmakers last year, that prohibits abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions to save the life of the pregnant woman or to prevent serious risk to her physical health, and in cases of rape and incest.