As we enter the final third of the legislative session – always its fastest and most volatile time – I want to introduce readers to three important bills this year that address the human dignity of unborn children and their mothers. Others deserve to be mentioned, but we’ll focus today on LB632, LB512 and LB669.
LB632, introduced by Senator Ben Hansen of Blair, requires that abortion facilities no longer treat the bodies of aborted unborn children as “medical waste,” disposing of them in landfills or sewers. The bill would ensure these babies are treated, at least after death, with a basic measure of human respect by requiring the abortion facility to arrange for their burial or cremation. Senator Dan Lonowski of Hastings has “prioritized” LB632, giving it a good chance of being debated and passed this session.
LB512, introduced by Senator Rick Holdcroft of Bellevue, and LB669, introduced by Senator Tanya Storer of Whitman, focus on the protection of women from the abortion industry. This theme – protecting women as well as unborn children – is, of course, a major one for pro-life advocates. Recent events, however, have underscored its urgency and importance, something we will return to later in the column.
LB512 requires abortionists, before giving abortion-inducing drugs, to screen women for a potentially fatal ectopic pregnancy. It also requires a follow-up appointment to check for common complications, some of which can be very serious, and for the facility to report those complications to the Department of Health and Human Services.
LB669, for its part, requires abortionists to privately screen women for domestic violence, coercion to abort and sex trafficking and to offer these women an opportunity for a confidential phone call before the abortion if they desire it.
The abortion industry has fiercely opposed these bills, providing an insight into their priorities for anyone with eyes to see. A few awful recent events in Nebraska are helping to illustrate the point.
In July 2024, the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services investigated the abortion mill in Bellevue – Leroy Carhart’s old “clinic” – and found that, among other legal violations, three individuals at that facility had been dispensing abortion pills without a license. Over 200 chemical abortions were illegally performed by unlicensed personnel over at least three months.
In February 2025, the New York Times, of all places, published an article entitled “Botched Care and Tired Staff: Planned Parenthood in Crisis.” This report singled out the Planned Parenthood facility in Omaha as a model of negligence and incompetence. A few examples from the article follow.
In 2022, Planned Parenthood in Omaha implanted an IUD (a long-acting contraceptive with abortifacient capabilities) into at least one woman’s uterus without checking to see if she was already pregnant. She was four months along, and the device killed her child within hours.
The same Omaha facility failed, for several months, to upload individuals’ test results for sexually transmitted infections. This led the people who were tested to conclude incorrectly that they were not infected.
Former abortion facility workers further describe that this same Omaha Planned Parenthood allowed a backed-up toilet at the facility to remain unfixed for weeks, leading to raw sewage leaking into the “abortion recovery room.” This was “addressed” by shoving medical gauze under the door to soak it up while business continued as usual.
These four recent examples are not the practices of organizations that care about women or are really about “Care, No Matter What.”
Planned Parenthood has almost $3 billion in assets. They spent millions on their failed campaign to impose abortion-on-demand into the Nebraska Constitution last year. But they don’t expend resources to train their staff for basic competency, deliver test results that would prevent the passing of sexually transmitted infections to others or fix their toilets so that post-abortive women don’t have to “vomit from the stench” immediately after having aborted their children.
This is what can reasonably be expected of organizations with a low regard for human life and human dignity. They are motivated solely by profit and will not govern themselves, so others must govern them. The state is the only authority with the competency to compel them to behave with a basic modicum of responsibility until we can finally shut them down, and that’s what these bills are designed to do. Please pray for their passage into law.
Marion Miner is associate director of Pro-Life and Family Policy at the Nebraska Catholic Conference, headquartered in Lincoln. Contact him at mmarion@necatholic.org
Commentary
Bills address the human dignity of unborn children and their mothers in Nebraska
April 3, 2025
As we enter the final third of the legislative session – always its fastest and most volatile time – I want to introduce readers to three important bills this year that address the human dignity of unborn children and their mothers. Others deserve to be mentioned, but we’ll focus today on LB632, LB512 and LB669.
LB632, introduced by Senator Ben Hansen of Blair, requires that abortion facilities no longer treat the bodies of aborted unborn children as “medical waste,” disposing of them in landfills or sewers. The bill would ensure these babies are treated, at least after death, with a basic measure of human respect by requiring the abortion facility to arrange for their burial or cremation. Senator Dan Lonowski of Hastings has “prioritized” LB632, giving it a good chance of being debated and passed this session.
LB512, introduced by Senator Rick Holdcroft of Bellevue, and LB669, introduced by Senator Tanya Storer of Whitman, focus on the protection of women from the abortion industry. This theme – protecting women as well as unborn children – is, of course, a major one for pro-life advocates. Recent events, however, have underscored its urgency and importance, something we will return to later in the column.
LB512 requires abortionists, before giving abortion-inducing drugs, to screen women for a potentially fatal ectopic pregnancy. It also requires a follow-up appointment to check for common complications, some of which can be very serious, and for the facility to report those complications to the Department of Health and Human Services.
LB669, for its part, requires abortionists to privately screen women for domestic violence, coercion to abort and sex trafficking and to offer these women an opportunity for a confidential phone call before the abortion if they desire it.
The abortion industry has fiercely opposed these bills, providing an insight into their priorities for anyone with eyes to see. A few awful recent events in Nebraska are helping to illustrate the point.
In July 2024, the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services investigated the abortion mill in Bellevue – Leroy Carhart’s old “clinic” – and found that, among other legal violations, three individuals at that facility had been dispensing abortion pills without a license. Over 200 chemical abortions were illegally performed by unlicensed personnel over at least three months.
In February 2025, the New York Times, of all places, published an article entitled “Botched Care and Tired Staff: Planned Parenthood in Crisis.” This report singled out the Planned Parenthood facility in Omaha as a model of negligence and incompetence. A few examples from the article follow.
In 2022, Planned Parenthood in Omaha implanted an IUD (a long-acting contraceptive with abortifacient capabilities) into at least one woman’s uterus without checking to see if she was already pregnant. She was four months along, and the device killed her child within hours.
The same Omaha facility failed, for several months, to upload individuals’ test results for sexually transmitted infections. This led the people who were tested to conclude incorrectly that they were not infected.
Former abortion facility workers further describe that this same Omaha Planned Parenthood allowed a backed-up toilet at the facility to remain unfixed for weeks, leading to raw sewage leaking into the “abortion recovery room.” This was “addressed” by shoving medical gauze under the door to soak it up while business continued as usual.
These four recent examples are not the practices of organizations that care about women or are really about “Care, No Matter What.”
Planned Parenthood has almost $3 billion in assets. They spent millions on their failed campaign to impose abortion-on-demand into the Nebraska Constitution last year. But they don’t expend resources to train their staff for basic competency, deliver test results that would prevent the passing of sexually transmitted infections to others or fix their toilets so that post-abortive women don’t have to “vomit from the stench” immediately after having aborted their children.
This is what can reasonably be expected of organizations with a low regard for human life and human dignity. They are motivated solely by profit and will not govern themselves, so others must govern them. The state is the only authority with the competency to compel them to behave with a basic modicum of responsibility until we can finally shut them down, and that’s what these bills are designed to do. Please pray for their passage into law.
Marion Miner is associate director of Pro-Life and Family Policy at the Nebraska Catholic Conference, headquartered in Lincoln. Contact him at mmarion@necatholic.org