5 for Life Club educates people on pro-abortion ballot initiative

The Nebraska Catholic Conference (NCC) is counting on good Catholics and a little math to help defeat a misleading pro-abortion ballot initiative.

The NCC has formed a 5 for Life Club that helps people start meaningful conversations to explain why the Protect the Right to Abortion petition would be bad for Nebraskans.

The conference – which represents Nebraska’s three bishops and Catholics across the state – asks that people reach out to share the truth with five people a week. That could include family members, friends, fellow parishioners and others.

If just 5,000 people took up that challenge between now and Election Day on Nov. 5, about a half million people could be educated about the dangers of the initiative, which would erase decades of pro-life legislation and enshrine abortion as a constitutional right in Nebraska.

The NCC is ready to help with free one-page downloads of educational information and conversation starters.

“Imagine the impact on hearts and minds those conversations can have to help defeat the pro-abortion ballot initiative,” the conference said on its website. For more information or to sign up, visit https://necatholic.org/resources/5-for-life-club.html

Those pushing the pro-abortion initiative have until July 3 to collect enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Their proposal would eliminate 50 years of health and safety protections for women and girls from unsafe abortions; allow teens to access abortion without their parent’s knowledge; and create a right to risky late-term abortions, according to the NCC and others.

The conference and the state’s bishops are supporting an alternative ballot initiative, Protect Women & Children, launched by a group of medical professionals.

The Protect Women & Children initiative would constitutionally protect babies in the womb during the second and third trimesters, as well as allow the Legislature to pass laws to further protect infants during the first trimester.

The measure would leave alone existing protections for women and babies from abortion.

Voters can morally support the incremental protections that the Protect Women & Children initiative offers, Archbishop George J. Lucas, Bishop James D. Conley and Bishop Joseph G. Hanefeldt have said. The proposal would not create any right to abortion in the Nebraska Constitution.

The bishops have said the Protect Women & Children initiative is an imperfect but effective alternative to the intrinsically evil pro-abortion measure.

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