Nebraska abortion rights groups collect enough signatures to advance referendum measure

A proposed amendment to enshrine access to abortion care in the Nebraska Constitution moved closer to being placed on the November ballot after a coalition of reproductive rights advocates submitted the required number of valid signatures to state officials on Wednesday.

Protect Our Rights, the group leading the ballot effort, said it has collected signatures from more than 207,000 registered voters — more than the roughly 123,000 it needed to submit by Wednesday’s deadline to advance its proposal to a vote.

The group said it also met a requirement under state law that the total include at least 5% of registered voters in 38 of the state’s 93 counties — something that had been considered a particularly difficult hurdle for abortion rights groups in the state.

A disproportionate number of Democratic voters in Nebraska, a solidly red state, live in a handful of counties surrounding Omaha and Lincoln; only two of the state’s 93 counties voted for President Joe Biden in 2020.

The Nebraska Secretary of State’s office confirmed that the group has exceeded the required number of signatures. The office has until August 12 to verify the submitted signatures and until September 13 to certify the measure for the November ballot.

The measure proposed by Protect Our Rights, a coalition that includes Planned Parenthood North Central States and the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska, seeks to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution until a fetus is viable, or around 24 weeks into a pregnancy. The proposal would allow exceptions beyond that time period for reasons of health and the woman’s life.

“As mothers, doctors, families, concerned citizens and those facing pregnancy, we were united in the belief that patients and providers should have the freedom to make their own health care decisions, not politicians,” Ashlei Spivey, a member of Protect Our Rights’ executive committee, said at a news conference Wednesday.

She added: “We believe that people should be treated with compassion and have the right to decide confidentially if and when to make the deeply personal decision to have an abortion. We also believe that health care providers should not be criminalized and forced to delay care or put their patients’ lives at risk because of extreme restrictions and political interference. We believed and knew that people across the state felt the same way.”

Currently, abortion is illegal in Nebraska after the 12th week of pregnancy, with the exception of rape, incest and saving the life of the mother.

If voters pass the proposed amendment, it would effectively repeal that law.

Nebraska is one of 11 states where organizers are seeking to enshrine abortion rights in each state constitution. Measures are officially on the ballot in Maryland, New York, Florida, South Dakota and Colorado. Arizona organizers submitted signatures to state officials earlier Wednesday.

In the two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, voters in several states—including California, Michigan and Ohio—have approved ballot measures guaranteeing abortion rights.

Nebraska organizers still face some hurdles before November, however.

Opponents of the referendum measure still have several weeks to contest the signatures. And above all, a second attempt with a Competing measures on reproductive rights could complicate the path forward for reproductive rights efforts.

The effort, backed by anti-abortion groups including the Nebraska Catholic Conference and Nebraska Right to Life, seeks to put before voters a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban abortion after the first trimester, except in situations where the abortion is “necessitated by a medical emergency or when the pregnancy results from sexual assault or incest.”

Anti-abortion groups working to advance the measure said its organizers had submitted more than 205,000 signatures, more than the required amount, to state officials as of Wednesday.

A third bill, launched by a group of anti-abortion activists, seeks to amend the state constitution by adding a legal personhood clause stating that “every unborn child, at every stage of its development, is a person.” If passed, it would effectively ban all abortion-related care and likely affect fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization.

That effort failed to collect the required number of signatures by the deadline, the Nebraska Secretary of State’s office said.