A bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy was introduced in the Nebraska state Legislature late last week by Speaker of the Legislature Mike Flood (R). Under the bill (see PDF), abortions after the 20th week, would only be permissible “to avert death or to avert serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.” The bill also cites “substantial evidence that abortion methods used at and after twenty weeks would cause substantial pain to an unborn child” as the reason for the ban. Flood told the Lincoln Journal Star that he decided to introduce the bill after Dr. Leroy Carhart, a Nebraska abortion provider, announced his intention to continue the work of Dr. George Tiller last summer. Dr. Carhart was a close friend and colleague of Dr. George Tiller, who was murdered in May 2009 at his church. Dr. Tiller was one of the few late abortion providers in the country. Prior to the murder, Dr. Carhart provided late abortions at Tiller’s clinic, Women’s Health Care Services, in Wichita, Kansas. In response to the bill’s introduction, Dr. Carhart told the Associated Press, “They can’t trump the Constitution and they can’t trump the Supreme Court…They can pass any law they want to…and spend millions of dollars to go to court and lose.”
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