The Future of Abortion Rights Could Be Decided by Accident

Things started to get confusing in March. For months, Protect Our Rights, a coalition of the Nebraska chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood, had been collecting signatures for a ballot initiative. It would amend the state constitution to protect a person’s right to abortion until fetal viability, the point in a pregnancy when a baby can survive on its own, and render the state’s existing 12-week ban unconstitutional. It had a good chance of success. People in seven other states, even deeply red ones, had voted in favor of like-minded measures since the repeal of Roe v. Wade, and the group’s internal polling suggested that 54% to 59% of Nebraskans supported the right to abortion in all or most cases.

But then a second coalition appeared with an oddly similar name: Protect Women and Children. It, too, proposed an abortion-related amendment. Instead of replacing the 12-week ban, this new group wanted to codify it in the state constitution. “It took us a while to figure out what this was or who was behind it,” says Andi Curry Grubb, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Nebraska. Eventually, Protect Our Rights figured out that the mystery initiative was the work of a pharmacist and three nurses being supported by anti-abortion Christian organizations including Nebraska Family Alliance and Nebraska Right to Life.