Nebraska Governor Vows to Convene Special Session to Enact Total Abortion Ban if Roe Overturned
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Republican Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts vowed Sunday to convene a special session of his state’s legislature to enact a sweeping pro-life law if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that legalized abortion nationally.
“Nebraska is a pro-life state. I believe life begins at conception, and those are babies too,” Ricketts told CNN’s Dana Bash when asked if there should be a rape exception for his proposed blanket abortion prohibition. “If Roe v. Wade, which is a horrible constitutional decision, gets overturned by the Supreme Court, which we’re hopeful of, here in Nebraska, we’re going to take further steps to protect those pre-born babies.”
He indicated that the state legislature would attempt to pre-empt the Supreme Court’s decision this term by enshrining pro-life measures into law.
“I will work with our speaker of the legislature to work on a special session and do more to protect preborn babies. We’ll have to wait and see what that decision is before we can take further steps, but that would certainly be my intention,” he said.
The governor’s pledge comes in the wake of a leak of a Supreme Court draft majority opinion penned by conservative Justice Samuel Alito that would rule in favor of the petitioner in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, reversing the precedent in Roe and returning the abortion issue to the states.
Multiple Republican-controlled states passed “trigger laws” this past year that would immediately outlaw abortions within the later gestational period, and some in the earlier stages of pregnancy, in the event that Roe is overturned. Some blue states have done the opposite, however. For instance, in April Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed a bill codifying the “fundamental right” to abortion, contraception, and other forms of “reproductive health-care” in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs.
In the past, the Nebraska legislature, which only has one chamber, failed to pass one such trigger law with the Nebraska Human Life Protection Act, which would have banned abortions without exceptions for rape and incest, and penalized physicians who performed an abortion.
