Nebraska has become the first state to have an anti-abortion measure win at the ballot box since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, additionally becoming the second state to reject an abortion rights measure following South Dakota.
Voters had to decide between two competing abortion initiatives: One to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution and another to protect the state’s 12-week abortion ban, allowing lawmakers to pass further restrictions.
Nebraska gives anti-abortion rights advocates a winning playbook after struggling in the years since the Dobbs decision in 2022: Instead of getting people to vote against abortion rights, get them to vote for something else.
Nebraska was one of several states where abortion was on the ballot, but it was the only state where voters had to decide between competing initiatives. The anti-abortion initiative got 55% approval and the abortion rights one failed, reaching nearly 49%. Ballot placement may have also influenced the outcome, with the measure protecting the state’s ban being placed before the one to enshrine abortion rights.
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Anti-abortion advocates previously told NOTUS they started organizing to gather signatures for their own measure as soon as abortion rights activists announced they were collecting signatures for a constitutional protection initiative.
The language for the measure does not explicitly ban abortion through the Nebraska constitution, but instead, it adds that “unborn children shall be protected from abortion in the second and third trimesters.”
Frank Pavone, the national director of the anti-abortion group Priests for Life, said in September that “it’s not phrasing it as it will, you know, shall prohibit abortion.” Instead, he told NOTUS at the time that people would support it because “who doesn’t want to protect children, right?”
Anti-abortion advocates’ messaging ahead of Election Day reflected that.
Adam Schwend, the regional director of state affairs for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, one of the groups that campaigned for the anti-abortion measure, said in a hearing organized by Nebraska’s state secretary’s office last week that the measure “is not an abortion ban, it is a commonsense, moderate limit for abortion.”
That messaging, they argued, reflects Americans’ nuanced opinions on abortion. The Pew Research Center found that while most people support maintaining access to the procedure, few Americans see it in absolute terms. Most believe it should be “mostly” legal or illegal or say there are exceptions to their support or opposition. (In fact, a petition seeking to grant personhood rights to a fetus in an effort to ban abortion overall in the state failed to get enough signatures to get on the ballot.)
In 2022, anti-abortion measures in Kansas, Kentucky and Montana were rejected.
The anti-abortion measure prohibits the legislature from passing laws that would allow abortion beyond 12 weeks, but they can pass stricter restrictions in the future.
After Nebraska state lawmakers in 2023 failed to pass a six-week abortion ban, Gov. Jim Pillen said he wanted to expand Republicans’ majority in the legislature to pass a total abortion ban in the state.
“It does nothing from stopping our legislature from turning around and doing a total abortion ban,” Allie Berry, the campaign manager for Protect Our Rights, told NOTUS in September. “Politicians in our state have made clear they want a total abortion ban in our state.”
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Oriana González is a reporter at NOTUS.
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