Lincoln’s Juju Tyner, right, leads the song “Over the Rainbow” during a protest against LB 574 limiting sex-identified care for transgender youth, on Friday, May 19, 2023, in Lincoln, Neb.
Justin Wan/AP
hide captions
switch captions
Justin Wan/AP
Lincoln’s Juju Tyner, right, leads the song “Over the Rainbow” during a protest against LB 574 limiting sex-identified care for transgender youth, on Friday, May 19, 2023, in Lincoln, Neb.
Justin Wan/AP
LINCOLN, Neb. — The Nebraska Legislature on Friday passed a 12-week ban on abortion and restrictions on sex-determined care for those under the age of 19 in a move so controversial that lawmakers Legislators of both sides have said that they may not be able to work together in the future.
Conservative lawmakers summoned a clearly ill colleague to get them enough votes to end the filming and pass the bill with both measures. Republican Governor Jim Pillen, who pushed the bill, has promised to sign it into law.
The mood in the Nebraska Capitol has been volatile since lawmakers on Tuesday passed a single vote on a combined measure that would bind the restrictions Republicans have pursued across the United States. One lawmaker, Omaha State Senator Megan Hunt, revealed in March that her teenage son is transgender and said Friday that she now plans to leave the state.
North Carolina also passed a 12-week abortion ban this week, among a series of restrictions enacted in states after the U.S. Supreme Court last year overturned a Roe v. Wade in 1973 established nationwide abortion rights. Fourteen states currently have a pregnancy ban.
However, Nebraska did not pass the new restrictions while continuing to ban abortions starting around 20 weeks of pregnancy. The 12-week ban includes exceptions for rape, incest and for saving a mother’s life. Opponents have been unsuccessful in finding an exception for fatal fetal malformations and to explicitly protect doctors from criminal charges for performing an abortion that caused a miscarriage. argumentative.
The bill would also prevent transgender people under the age of 19 from receiving any gender confirmation surgery. It would also limit the use of hormone treatments and puberty-blocking drugs in minors, placing the state’s chief medical officer – a political appointee as an otolaryngologist – responsible for setting the rules for such therapies. In Nebraska, people under the age of 19 are considered minors.
At least 17 states have enacted laws restricting or banning sex-determined medical care to minors, and the proposals are pending review by the governors of Texas and Missouri. Health groups and advocates say such restrictions are marginalizing transgender youth and threatening their health.
Nebraska’s restrictions on sex-determined care won’t go into effect until October 1. The abortion ban will go into effect immediately after the governor signs it. Opponents of the bill promised to sue to block both measures.
Friday’s debate was briefly halted as protesters stood on their balconies and shouted obscenities at conservative lawmakers while hurling what appeared to be bloody tampons. down to the floor. The Nebraska State Patrol cleared both balconies and said at least six people were arrested. As lawmakers began voting, hundreds of protesters crammed into the Capitol’s roundhouse shouting, “Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame!” just outside the room.
Hundreds of businesses and health professionals have signed letters warning that both the abortion ban and transgender health restrictions will drive corporations and doctors out of the state. A letter filed Friday and signed by more than 1,200 Nebraska health professionals called the bill “a direct attack on our state’s medical community.”
Senator Kathleen Kauth, author of the transgender health measure, has repeatedly referred to the rise in children identifying as transgender as “social contagion”. She said the measure is intended to protect children from doing something they may later regret.
“It doesn’t mean that we hate them in any imaginable way,” she said. “Quite the opposite: We love them.”
Kauth’s Measure was the source of an epic movie by Senator Omaha. Machaela Cavanaugh, who along with a number of progressive allies, including Hunt, slowed the passage of the law by introducing one amendment after another to every bill that made it a reality. Senate floor. That has left the leadership scrambling to prioritize which bills to pass.
After lawmakers merged abortion limits with transgender health bill, State Senator Julie Slama hinted that conservatives are advocating restrictions on affirmative care sex simply to retaliate against Cavanaugh. Slama noted that the original restrictions did not have the 33 votes needed to survive.
On Friday, Cavanaugh announced he would continue his filming work until the end of this year’s session in early June and even through 2024.
“This place is morally bankrupt,” Cavanaugh said. “I’m looking forward to 2025 when I no longer have to serve with many of you.”
Conservatives in the officially nonpartisan, one-house Legislature announced earlier this month that they would amend the transgender health bill to tighten abortion restrictions. That unusual move comes after conservatives were unable to pass a bill banning abortions once heart activity can be detected – usually around six weeks into pregnancy, before many women know. i’m pregnant.
Legislative rules state that a bill that doesn’t beat a filmmaker must be tabulated for the year. So competitors were taken aback by the plan announced last week.
Left-leaning lawmakers complain that conservatives have essentially created a new bill without receiving a public hearing. They also say it violates state law requiring amendments related to the basic bill.
