Nebraska’s proposed Legislative Bill 512 would require pregnant people seeking a medication abortion to attend two in-person appointments with a physician before and after receiving the medication, imposing greater restrictions on more than 80 percent of abortions performed in the state.
“This bill is part of a broader effort by lawmakers who want to outlaw abortion to restrict it to the point it’s no longer accessible. We are here to say, ‘Not today. Not on our watch,’” Adelle Burk, senior manager of public affairs of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Nebraska, told KETV7.
While Nebraska law already prohibits using telehealth to access abortion medication, State Sen. Rick Holdcroft (R) stated that LB 512 aims to prevent doctors from traveling to Nebraska solely to prescribe the medication and then leaving. The bill would require physicians to schedule an in-person follow-up visit with the patient within three to 14 days of administering the medication. During this follow-up, any “adverse events,” such as complications like heavy bleeding, infections, or a missed ectopic pregnancy, would need to be reported to the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services.
While proponents of the bill argue that its goal is to ensure quality health care for people receiving abortions, reproductive health doctors and abortion rights advocates in Nebraska believe the proposed restrictions are designed to make accessing medication abortions even more difficult in the state.
“For more than 20 years, medication abortion has been a safe, effective, FDA-approved method for people to end a pregnancy in the comfort of their own homes. There is absolutely no medical reason behind the restrictions included in LB 512,” Burk told KETV7.
Dr. Elizabeth Constance, a reproductive endocrinologist in Omaha, told the Nebraska Examiner that while the bill doesn’t explicitly ban key medications like mifepristone or misoprostol, it would effectively amount to a total ban on medication abortions. She also noted that it could complicate access to care, including in health care emergencies and miscarriage management, as these drugs would face stricter regulations under the bill.
“[] I do think it puts so many onerous and non-standard of care restrictions on their use that it will effectively be a total ban on medication abortions,” Constance told the Nebraska Examiner in a text. “Effective ban if not an outright one.”
Nebraska currently enforces a 12-week abortion ban with very limited exceptions, a policy that already jeopardizes the lives and mental health of pregnant people in the state.
“In Nebraska, we have these exceptions, but in my situation it wasn’t assault, it wasn’t incest, and my life wasn’t in immediate danger, so I automatically just lose health care,” Kim Paseka, a 34-year-old woman living in Lincoln, Nebraska, who was forced to carry a nonviable pregnancy for a month, told Vox in October. “They’re forgetting how detrimental that can be to mental health, that it’s not just about physical endangerment. … I felt like a walking coffin.”
In November, abortion proponents attempted to enshrine the right to abortion in Nebraska’s state constitution, but the measure was one of three across the country that failed to pass. The presence of two abortion-related measures on the ballot may have caused confusion among voters.
“We hear all the time how confusing the two measures are and folks are very afraid of accidentally checking the wrong one,” Shelley Mann, the executive director of Nebraska Abortion Resources (NEAR), the state’s only abortion fund, told Vox last October.
Although the abortion rights measure failed, the separate proposal banning abortion starting in the second trimester was approved. Abortion rights advocates have warned that this new restriction will significantly complicate efforts to overturn the state’s abortion ban.
The state’s restrictive laws have already forced pregnant people in Nebraska to seek abortion care in other states, like Colorado and Kansas. Additionally, many residents have started exploring long-term contraceptive options, such as vasectomies and sterilization.
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