For years, women’s reproductive rights have been a hot-button issue in our political system. In the aughts, we have seen the government go both forward and back in instituting laws that allow women the freedom of deciding what is best for their own bodies. The ACLU has always worked to ensure that this freedom remains constant within the scope of our Constitution.
The decision to have a baby or have an abortion is a personal and private decision that should be left to a woman, her family and her doctor. Unfortunately, Nebraska is one of the most restrictive states in terms of abortion law.
In 2013, Guttmacher’s policy review on state laws affecting reproductive health and rights put Nebraska as a state “hostile” to abortion rights, meaning that there are 4-10 major restrictions on abortion access. This is a departure from Nebraska’s “middle-ground” ranking in 2000.
The ACLU has worked to block further attacks on a woman’s reproductive freedom while acting to rollback the existing restrictions. In 2011, ACLU lobbyist Alan Peterson testified at a hearing against LB 232, a proposed Nebraska bill that would have allowed the use of the "justifiable homicide" defense for killings intended to prevent harm to a fetus.
In 2010, we honored Dr. LeRoy Carhart with the Roger Baldwin Civil Libertarian Award, which is given to an individual or entity that has helped the ACLU of Nebraska advance civil liberties in the last year. Dr. Carhart, from the Abortion and Contraceptive Clinic of Bellevue, brought a suit to Nebraska’s then-Attorney General Don Stenberg that sought a declaratory judgment that a state law banning certain forms of abortion was unconstitutional. The case was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, where the justices decided in favor of Carhart and gave us a victory for reproductive freedom.
Finally, in 2004, then Executive Director of the ACLU of Nebraska, Tim Butz, published "Choice a Core Civil Liberty: Bringing Nebraskans to the March for Women's Health and Lives" on ACLU National's website. Here, he outlined how we established a scholarship fund that began with a generous grant of $4000 from an individual donor and continued to grow through various fundraising events. His vision was to fill five buses full of scholarship recipients from across the state to attend the March in order to help in the final push to make this the biggest rally for reproductive rights in our nation's history.
This year, our national offices have partnered with the Center for Reproductive Rights and Planned Parenthood to coordinate a legal strike on restrictive abortion laws in the states of Alaska, Missouri and North Carolina. Their intention is to bring lawsuits like this to other states that to fight until every woman has the dignity to make decisions about her body, her family and her future.
With your help, the ACLU stands ready to fight back against state level attacks that seek to take these personal decisions away from women and their families and give our government control over the most intimate aspects of our lives.
Learn more about these efforts on our Reproductive Freedom page.
2016 is the 50th anniversary of the ACLU of Nebraska. We will feature several memories from our five decades of defending freedom in the Cornhusker state here. Do you have a favorite memory? Share it with us!
