Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal News Blogs -> JURIST - The Paper Chase

Legal News

: JURIST - The Paper Chase

Nebraska legislature approves bill tightening abortion restrictions

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] The Nebraska Legislature voted 40-9 Monday to approve a bill requiring a heightened level of informed consent and physician assessment of women seeking abortions. The bill would require health care professionals to determine if the woman seeking the abortion had been pressured into the procedure and would also require them to assess the woman for additional risk factors that could lead to mental or physical complications. Physicians would be responsible for assessing any risk factor mentioned in any research article appearing in peer-reviewed journals one year prior to the procedure, and failure to adequately assess a patient would expose the physician to civil charges. According to the bill, factors to be assessed include "physical, psychological, emotional, demographic, or situational" factors. Critics of the bill claim it is too vague and that it would be difficult for physicians to know all the risk factors for which they are responsible. Proponents of the bill state that the type of patient assessment required by the bill for abortions is in line with the assessments required for other medical procedures. Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman is expected to sign the bill into law Tuesday. Also Tuesday, the Nebraska legislature is expected to vote on a second bill that would ban abortions after the twentieth week and would narrow the circumstances under which exceptions to the law would be allowed. If the Nebraska bills become law, they would join recent anti-abortion laws in Oklahoma, which advocacy groups have criticized and promised to challenge in court. The possibility of the Supreme Court hearing a case challenging these laws could have an impact on the confirmation hearings of President Obama's nominee to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on April 13, 2010 (boomark / email).