March 12, 2021
“This represents a real danger to the women of our state and shows just how far the abortion lobby will go to help abortionists make more money… Only for abortion do we see this reckless push for reducing medical standards,” said SFLAction’s Jaylem Durousseau.
LINCOLN, N.E. & WASHINGTON D.C. (03-12-2021) – Students for Life Action/Students for Life of America’s Jaylem Durousseau, Midwest Regional Coordinator, will testify before the Judiciary committee today in opposition to Nebraska’s LB 276, a bill that seeks to strike down maternal protections requiring that licensed physicians carry out abortions in the state.
Durousseau’s statement reads as follows:
Nebraska’s LB276 would reduce medical standards protecting women by eliminating a requirement that the physician be physically present in the same room when an abortion is performed.” This represents a real danger to the women of our state and shows just how far the abortion lobby will go to help abortionists make more money. Name another medical event that the state wants to REDUCE requirements for, or other surgeries for which the state says doctors will no longer be needed.
Only for abortion do we see this reckless push for reducing medical standards.
A decade ago, with the passage of 521, the bill that put this precaution into place, senators voted overwhelmingly in favor, with over 80 % voting in the affirmative, including a member of this committee. LB 521 was put into place to ensure that abortion facilities, who typically portray themselves as a standard medical clinic, are in fact held to the same standards as others.
If I blew out my UCL playing in my Men’s baseball league, it would be imprudent and dangerous to solicit the services of my team members to perform a surgery to repair it. In similar fashion removing this safeguard for women would be extremely dangerous.
This bill also highlights a grand hypocrisy: it wouldn’t remove licensure requirements for any other surgeon or physician, only for those committed to performing abortions. Many of the statistics also point to the necessary nature of proper medical care. Abortion is the 5th leading cause of maternal death in our nation, 20% of women face complications related to abortion, and 20.3 % of patients that undergo a chemical abortion still require a post-abortion surgical procedure.
These statistics also point to another truth. Abortion hurts women. It also highlights the profound irony in the abortion lobby mainly from its behemoth Planned Parenthood. They say their motto is “Care no Matter What.” But this very bill highlights potentially a very different mantra, Profit No Matter What.
Writing about this bill recently in Townhall, Students for Life Action President Kristan Hawkins discussed why this reckless action was being considered. She wrote:
The abortion industry wants to strike down the physician requirement because it’s difficult for them to find healers who are willing to kill. And that is exactly what abortion requires a physician to do. Abortion is an act of heinous violence using drugs and devices to artificially interrupt pregnancy and kill a child growing inside his mother’s body. Convincing a doctor to use his skillset to kill his patients is asking him to discard the entire body of Hippocratic healing principles that formed him, and that’s no easy ask.
Planned Parenthood has recently demonstrated an unwillingness to properly ensure safety standards already such as in the case of a sexual assault of a 15-year-old student at Omaha North. The ability for her abuser to pose as her father, despite the laws in place, highlights that Planned Parenthood is willing to disregard the health and safety of the women in front of them. LB276 represents a danger to Nebraska women by placing the ability to easily and cheaply commit an abortion and passes this expense on to the woman instead. LB276 is bad for women and bad for Nebraska, therefore I humbly ask for a vote for the women of our state, and a vote against LB276.”
Read the op-ed by SFLAction President Kristan Hawkins on LB276 in Townhall.
Stay up to date on the Pro-Life Generation’s engagement in state legislation at https://studentsforlifeaction.org
For interviews, e-mail Kristi Hamrick at [email protected]
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Students for Life Action (SFLAction) is the 501c4 sister organization of Students for Life of America (SFLA), the nation’s largest, pro-life, student organization with more than 1,240 groups on middle, high school, and university campuses in all 50 states. Students for Life has more conversations with those most targeted by the abortion industry every day, week, and year than any other pro-life outreach in the world and mobilizes the Pro-Life Generation to confront abortion at the local, state and national levels daily. Every week, Students for Life entities reach more than 2 million people across social media platforms to have nearly 200,000 digital conversations with the most engaged pro-life online audience in the world.
Students for Life of America (SFLA) is the nation’s largest, pro-life, youth organization. Headquartered in Fredericksburg, VA, SFLA serves more than 1,240 groups on college and university, middle and high school, medical and law school campuses in all 50 states. Student pro-life organizations work to confront policies on their campuses to support pregnant and parenting students, to end Planned Parenthood’s relationships with schools and communities, and to change minds of their peers about abortion. SFLA has more conversations with those most targeted by the abortion industry every day, week, and year than any other pro-life outreach in the world and mobilizes the Pro-Life Generation to confront abortion at the local, state and national levels daily. Every week, Students for Life entities reach more than 2 million people across social media platforms to have nearly 200,000 digital conversations with the most engaged pro-life online audience in the world.