It’s not often the Abortion Industry fails to challenge a piece of pro-life legislation–no matter how popular or commonsensical it is– but that’s what just happened in Nebraska.
Martha Stoddard, of the Omaha World-Herald, reported yesterday that LB 814, a law that prohibits the dismemberment of living unborn babies, went into effect last week.
As for a response from abortionists, we read
No legal challenges have been filed in Nebraska. A spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood North Central States, which covers Nebraska, said the organization has no plans for litigation.
“Planned Parenthood is proud to provide our patients with high-quality, nonjudgmental reproductive health care, and that will not change with this new law,” Emily Bisek said.
If you read Stoddard’s account (really an editorial dressed up as a news story) in conjunction with the mere three paragraph account in the same Omaha World-Herald back in August when Gov. Pete Ricketts signed LB 814 into law, you have a case study in agenda-driven, media bias.
Stoddard’s entire argument is that the law won’t make any difference, that not that many abortions will be stopped. She even quotes Dr. LeRoy Carhart, the King of late-term abortions, to that effect.
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Which is fascinating because once the law passed, Carhart fled to Maryland where he could ply his grisly trade under the state’s ultra-permissive abortion trade.
But, in fact, there is plenty of impact from passage. Stoddard quoted Marion Miner of the Nebraska Catholic Conference who placed LB 814 in context. Miner
noted that the new law follows 2019 legislation requiring that women be told that it may not be too late to continue their pregnancy if they change their minds halfway through a medication abortion. It also follows 2018 legislation that effectively barred Planned Parenthood from receiving federal Title X family planning funds distributed by the state.
Of course, Stoddard is so busy pooh-poohing the law’s direct impact that she misses the tremendous educational impact of the legislative debate. How many Nebraskans knew, for example, what is done to large, developed unborn babies?
State Sen. Suzanne Geist, the sponsor, said at a January 8 press conference, “Regardless of our individual opinions on the issue of abortion, I think we can all agree that no living human being should be torn apart limb by limb.”
As LB 814 was being debate, the late Julie Schmit-Albin, who was Executive Director of Nebraska Right to Life at the time, said, “Can you imagine what it would feel like to be torn limb by limb until you bleed to death?” She added, “Now put yourself in the place of defenseless unborn babies who are aborted via this method known as Dismemberment Abortion. We thank Senator Geist for seeking to ban this practice with LB 814.”
Schmit-Albin concluded, “When the abortion industry practices brutal techniques, it only makes sense for lawmakers to seek to end those practices just as they have previously with partial-birth abortion and with abortions after 20 weeks based upon fetal pain.”
Contrary to Stoddard, each and every pro-lifer in Nebraska understood the importance of “Ending the Disgrace of Dismemberment Abortion,” as Gov. Ricketts described it in a March 2, 2020 column.
There are now 13 states that have drawn a line in the sand. Nebraska joins Kansas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Kentucky, Ohio, North Dakota, and Indiana in saying this monstrosity is beyond the pale. We can only hope and pray that number increases.
Allow me to quote from Governor Rickett’s March 2 column, written as the long journey to pass LB 814 was picking up speed:
Thankfully, State Senator Suzanne Geist is taking steps to end this horrific practice. This session, she has introduced a bill (LB 814) to end the brutal practice of dismemberment abortion in Nebraska. This type of abortion usually takes place between 13 and 24 weeks of pregnancy. The barbaric procedure literally rips apart a preborn child, piece by piece, to destroy the life of the baby.
Developmentally, babies make incredible strides between 13 and 24 weeks. Early in this stage, a baby’s sex becomes clear. During this window of time, little boys or girls start to move their eyes, and they begin to hear. Around 16 weeks, an ultrasound can detect them moving their arms and legs. A few weeks later, a baby will begin to suck his or her thumb. Babies born prematurely at the end of this stage (24 weeks) have a survival rate of around 60-70%. Improvements in neonatal care are constantly increasing these odds as well as making survival a possibility even earlier in a pregnancy.
Imagine watching a sleeping baby girl peacefully suck her thumb inside of her mother’s womb. Then consider the horror of seeing that same baby girl flail her tiny arms and legs as an abortionist uses forceps to clutch at her body. If you could stomach the sight, you would see the baby’s life gruesomely destroyed as the abortionist dissevered her body, bit by bit, grasping and crushing her little skull as part of the process.
Unfortunately, we can imagine; we wish we couldn’t. Tragically, the Abortion Industry and its minions in the media can’t either, a failure of moral imagination on a colossal scale.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
