Statement from Bradley Pierce, Constitutional Attorney
“Nebraska Initiative 439 would enshrine abortion as a fundamental right. No one who values life should support it. But the other abortion-related initiative, Nebraska Initiative 434, also has serious problems.
In article 1, section 3, the Nebraska Constitution has a clause that forbids any person from being deprived of the equal protection of the laws. Section 1 also provides that all persons have the right to life.
Nebraska Initiative 434 would undermine both the equal protection and right to life provisions of the state's constitution and weaken the argument that they should be interpreted to apply to preborn persons. Also, a judge without judicial principles could even try to interpret Initiative 434 to protect a right to abortion in the first trimester.
Instead of pursuing Initiative 434, Nebraska officials should be seeking to apply the existing equal protection and right to life clauses of its constitution to protect the lives of every preborn person in the state.”
Don’t support constitutionally legalized murder!
Vote NO on both of these proposed amendments, which will be appearing on the ballot in Nebraska in November of 2024.
Initiative Measure 434: “Except when a woman seeks an abortion necessitated by a medical emergency or when the pregnancy results from sexual assault or incest, unborn children shall be protected from abortion in the second and third trimesters.”
Initiative Measure 439: “All persons shall have a fundamental right to abortion until fetal viability, or when needed to protect the life or health of the pregnant patient, without interference from the state or its political subdivisions. Fetal viability means the point in pregnancy when, in the professional judgment of the patient’s treating health care practitioner, there is a significant likelihood of the fetus’ sustained survival outside the uterus without the application of extraordinary medical measures.”
The amendments are set to appear as separate measures on the general election ballot. We urge Nebraskans to vote AGAINST both measures. For the measures to fail, both of them need to receive more votes Against than For.
Following are sixteen reasons to vote no on both of these evil amendments. Consider just how alike they both are.
1.) Both would constitutionally allow most abortions in Nebraska. According to the CDC, nearly all abortions nationwide occur in the first trimester.*
2.) Both would subvert the Nebraska Constitution so that it would no longer treat all human beings as equal under the law.
Compare the language of the proposed amendments to sections 1 and 3 of the same article in our Constitution:
Section 1: “All persons are by nature free and independent, and have certain inherent and inalienable rights; among these are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness…”
Section 3: “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor be denied equal protection of the laws.”
3.) Both would embed abortion into the Constitution as something other than murder. Another way of putting this is that both treat abortion as healthcare, which can be regulated, rather than murder, which must be abolished.
The reason why abortion remains legal in Nebraska, post-Roe, is because Nebraska Revised Statues regulate the practice. Our state’s Constitution is not the problem.
Significantly, the proposed pro-life amendment would add into Nebraska’s Constitution the very divide that helped make Roe v. Wade a reality in the first place. The hypocrisy of pre-Roe Texas law giving immunity to mothers for abortions was instrumental in the federal Court’s opinion to decriminalize abortion, as Justice Blackmun indicated in footnote 54 of the Roe decision, saying that if Texas truly believed preborn human beings were persons, the penalties would be the same for their murder as for that of born persons.†
4.) Both consider many preborn human beings to not be persons, making a distinction never before seen in our Constitution (that human beings and human persons are somehow different concepts), and thus eroding existing protections for the preborn already implicit in the Constitution.
5.) Both account many preborn children as not bearing the image of God, and neither possessing nor worthy of having the right to life, due process, or equal protection of the laws. If according to our Constitution, all persons have a right to life, from which they cannot be denied without due process of law, but many preborn human beings were to be excluded from protection, deprived of life, and denied any recourse under the law, then are they being treated as humans?
6.) Both would give women a constitutional right to choose to have an abortion. For if a woman could kill her own child, and the Constitution would protect her, clearly she would have a right that would supersede the child’s right to life. Or, to restate: both would make abortion constitutionally legal, adding special murder rights for mothers into the Constitution.
7.) Both encourage evil: “Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil.” (Ecclesiastes 8:11, ESV)
8.) Both make ageist distinctions between one kind of human being and another.
9.) Both promote a culture where some children are worth more than others, and murder of the youngest children is acceptable by constitutional law.
10.) Both are anti-family. (Unless preborn human beings are not part of the family?)
11.) Both pervert justice by being partial in the extreme toward mothers who kill their children, and severely prejudiced against preborn babies. “You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality.” (Deuteronomy 16:19, ESV)
12.) Both decree iniquity through perpetuating the oppression of the most innocent among us, preventing the neediest from receiving justice, and depriving them of their most basic rights. “Woe to those … who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right!” (Isaiah 5:22–23, ESV)
13.) Both would acquit the guilty mothers and fathers who kill their very young children, while constitutionally condemning to death their innocent victims without mercy and without trial.
14.) Both neglect justice by treating less developed or less wanted human beings as less valuable — indeed, as having no inherent value at all, but only property to be destroyed at will as one pleases. This is what should be expected from amendments which do not locate the value of human beings in that which actually gives them value in the first place: being made in the image of God.
15.) Both make a mockery of our state motto: “Equality before the law.”
16.) Both call good what God calls iniquitous and detestable.
“Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent — the Lord detests them both.” (Proverbs 17:15, NIV)
“Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees, and the writers who keep writing oppression, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey!” (Isaiah 10:1–2, ESV)
For all of the above reasons, we plead with you, vote no to both of these evil amendments! Please, do not cast your vote to write into our Constitution a law that condemns the helpless, that oppresses innocent children, that turns aside the needy from justice, that robs people of their right, and that makes fatherless children prey!
And do not let the pro-life establishment scare you into voting for the terribly mistitled “Protect Women and Children” amendment. Their amendment is based on fear. Fear that they will lose all of the “progress” they have made. But the truth is, the pro-life movement has been losing for 50 years. Five decades of compromise with inherent wickedness is not progress. What is the result? Even post-Roe, almost all abortions are still legal in Nebraska.
Do not vote based on fear. Not unless it is the fear of God and obedience to his commands, such as those quoted above. Take your stand on God’s holy Word, and leave the results to Him.
Dear fellow Nebraskan, the blood of thousands upon thousands of innocent children slain in our state over the past decades already cries out to God with a very great and bitter cry. Let us not add to our wickedness and give God even more reason to be angry with us by further entrenching into our laws the practice of modern-day child sacrifice. But rather, let us humble ourselves before the Lord of the universe, repent of our evil ways, and plead with him for mercy.
Again, we beg you, don’t support constitutionally legalized murder!
“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
correct oppression;
bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”
(Isaiah 1:16–17, ESV)
* “Abortion Surveillance — United States, 2021,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/ss/ss7209a1.htm
† Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 157–58 n. 54 (1973).
