A Republican lawmaker helped block an abortion bill

Riepe and Burgum: State abortion laws fail in southern carolina and nebraska without a sixth-week ban

The state has recently helped patients across the region where Republican officials have restricted abortion access. Six Republicans helped block motions to end debate and defeated any chance the bill will pass this year.

In Nebraska, where abortion is currently illegal after 20 weeks of pregnancy, the last vote was a rousing success, with opponents waving signs and yelling “Whose house?” as they cheered outside the legislative chamber. Our house!

“The only thing that we can do when you all, you men in the chamber, metaphorically keep slapping women by raising abortion again and again and again, is for us to slap you back with our words,” she said.

In North Dakota, Gov. Doug Burgum signed a ban Monday that has narrow exceptions: Abortion is legal in pregnancies caused by rape or incest, but only in the first six weeks of pregnancy. In certain medical emergencies, abortion is allowed later in the baby’s life.

The bill failed to get the crucial 33rd vote when Sen. Merv Riepe, a former hospital administrator from Ralston, abstained. Riepe was a cosigner of the bill but expressed concern this year that a six-week ban might not give women enough time to know they were pregnant.

When Riepe received resistance from other Republicans, he told them they should be on guard for signs that women will vote against them if abortion is legalized.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/28/1172741653/strict-abortion-bans-fail-in-deep-red-south-carolina-and-nebraska

Reply to the Comments of South Carolina Sen. Melissa Block on “Abortion laws in the senate are all about control”

South Carolina’s senators criticized those who prioritized near-total ban over efforts to make the state a 49th state with a law that gives harsher punishments for violent hate crimes.

She said it is unfortunate that women have to reveal intimate experiences to men to engage them.

“Just as rape is about power, so is this total ban,” he said. “Those who continue to push legislation like this are raping us again with their indifference, violating us again with their righteous indignation, taunting us again with their insatiable need to play God while they continue to pass laws that are ungodly.”

Abortion laws, each and every one of them, have been about control. It’s always about control, plain and simple. The males have total control in the senate. We do not want your protection, we did not ask for it. We don’t need it. I can’t do anything when a woman such as me is insulted, only make sure that she gets an earful.

Senn spoke with NPR’s Melissa Block on Friday to discuss her stance on reproductive rights, and what she sees for the future of the GOP’s position on the issue.

What do conservative legislators want to know about abortion and baby killers? “What a baby killer should have been done last week, and what they wouldn’t have done next year”

It is crazily oppressive. I don’t like any bills that, to me, are radical. And whether that’s from the left or the right. I wish politics would move closer to the middle. And on these divisive issues, it just needs to be on a ballot. The men in the legislature will not allow that to happen. And our legislature is overwhelmingly male.

This is where I’ve come down, and in my view it’s the best moderate place that I know to be, with exceptions. But these people, especially over in the House of Representatives, they’ve got a caucus over there called the Freedom Caucus. They are going to be absolutely sure that there will be no abortion, they won’t do it within six weeks, they don’t plan to do it for 12 weeks, and so on and so forth.

So right now, they’re stuck with the law that’s up to 22 weeks. They went around and called me a baby killer. I got a postcard that got released in my district that said that I had killed 5,000 babies this year.