February 22, 2024
“We cannot make peace with a ‘little’ abortion, defined so broadly as to protect almost no one,” said Students for Life Action Vice President of Media and Policy Kristi Hamrick. “Yet, Nebraska Republican Senator Merve Riepe is once again asking residents of his state to go backwards on life, accepting false premises about the value of human life and the culpability of trained medical professionals.”
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LINCOLN, N.E. (2-22-2024) – Students for Life Action (SFLAction) students will testify before the Nebraska Legislature today, asking members of the Judiciary Committee to vote against a newly introduced bill, LB1109. The proposed law, introduced by Senator Merv Riepe, a Republican that SFLAction has identified as one of “Bidens Favorite Republicans,” would allow abortions beyond the state’s 12-week limits in cases of fatal fetal anomalies and remove criminal penalties for doctors who perform an abortion outside of “the exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother.”
WATCH LIVE: SFLAction Students Testify Against Pro-Abortion Law, at 2:30pm EST
“The newly proposed legislation has many faults – the argument it makes regarding prenatal testing is wrong, it assumes that children born with genetic conditions are unworthy of life, and that abortion doctors shouldn’t be punished for inflicting violence upon women and preborn children,” said Hamrick. “The fact is that Nebraska needs stronger protections for life, not more abortion. Yet we should expect nothing less from Senator Riepe, who has time and time again proven himself to be a willing partner with a predatory abortion industry that ends life for money.”
Currently, thanks to Senator Riepe, Nebraska allows abortion up to 12 weeks, instead of having protections when a Heartbeat is detectable. To be clear, by 12 weeks, more than 9 in 10 abortions will be committed, making Riepe’s move a push for almost all abortions.
The law implies an argument that genetic abnormalities or fetal diseases – like Trisomy 18, which entered the news cycle because of the Kate Cox case in Texas – is a death-sentence, or worthy of one at the hands of doctors. However, Students for Life of America has chronicled that there are numerous children that have lived well beyond their initial diagnosed survival time-frame.
READ: Rick Santorum and His Daughter’s Journey with Trisomy 18
Meanwhile, other families have shared the joy of the chance to experience life with their child, however short that might have been.
What’s more, prenatal testing has become extraordinarily unreliable as a means to detect genetic or fetal abnormalities. As a New York Times article from June 2023 notes: “when prenatal tests screened for rare diseases, their positive results were wrong 80 percent to 93 percent of the time.”
That same article noted that in April 2022 “the F.D.A. issued a specific warning about the risks of false positives from noninvasive prenatal tests, instructing doctors not to make suggestions based on these results alone and stressing the need to follow positive screenings with more reliable diagnostic testing.”
The NYT article noted that the FDA was “’aware of reports’ that some women ‘ended pregnancies based only on the results” of these screening tests.”
“Abysmally bad science is too often used to pressure women to abort their own children,” said Hamrick. “We call on Nebraskan leaders to vote against this unconscionable and wrongheaded bill that insinuates some babies cannot be loved. The Pro-Life Generation and Republican voters can and should expect their leaders to follow their values and support policies and positions that defend the lives of the preborn, not the pocketbooks of the abortion industry.”
Visit our blogs at Students for Life of America and Students for Life Action to see and learn more.
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The Pro-Life Generation (PLG) is an umbrella organization encompassing the most-cutting edge engagement opportunities for a Vote Pro-Life First Community. PLG includes Students for Life Action (SFLAction), a 501c4, along with its 501c3 sister organization, Students for Life of America (SFLA), that together make up the nation’s largest, pro-life youth organization, managing a grassroots political and policy operation engaging Americans of all ages but with a special emphasis on the largest segment of voters — the Youth Vote. Headquartered in Fredericksburg, VA, PLG/SFLA/SFLAction serves more than 1,400 groups on middle, high school, college, medical, and law school campuses in all 50 states. Our team has more conversations with this generation targeted by the abortion lobby than any other pro-life operation in the world, each week reaching more than 4 million across social media platforms and averaging 1.3 million video views. In addition to SFLA/SFLAction, PLG leads multiple initiatives to lead and serve the future of the pro-life movement including the Campaign for Abortion Free Cities, Standing With You, and the Demetree Institute for Pro-Life Advancement . Over more than 17 years, PLG CEO Kristan Hawkins has grown the operation into a nearly $20M organization, now preparing for an abortion-free America.
