Nebraska to Vote on Restrictions on Abortion and Transgender Care for Minors

Nebraska lawmakers were expected to vote on Friday on a bill addressing two of the most fraught issues in state legislative sessions around the nation this year: access to abortion and medical care for transgender youth.

During the final days of a session that was notable for vociferous debate and persistent filibustering over the two issues, conservative legislators bundled provisions restricting access to both forms of medical treatment into a single bill. A vote was expected to take place on Friday afternoon in Nebraska’s single-house Legislature, which is nominally nonpartisan but dominated by Republicans.

The merging of the two issues that have consumed many state legislatures this year was largely for practical reasons in Nebraska’s capital: Proponents of limits on abortion and transgender medical treatment were running out of time to push the issues through as stand-alone laws before the session ended.

The blended bill, known as L.B. 574, includes looser restrictions than the original provisions that Republicans sought to pass. Republicans saw it as a compromise, while Democrats were furious about what they saw as a last-minute scramble to revive restrictions on abortion.

Nebraska Republicans initially had sought to ban most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, but that measure failed, and the amended proposal set the limit at 12 weeks. The bill under consideration on Friday includes exceptions for rape, incest and medical emergencies.

An earlier bill on medical treatment for transgender people would have barred minors from receiving puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgeries. But after extensive debate and back room negotiations, Republicans scaled back their goal to ensure that they would have enough support.

The proposal expected to come to a vote on Friday bans surgeries but calls on the state’s chief medical officer to establish criteria under which puberty blockers and hormone therapy may be administered to people younger than 19. The restriction would be enforced starting Oct. 1.

State Senator Ben Hansen, a Republican who proposed attaching the abortion limit to the bill restricting transgender care, said that neither side would walk away with a clear victory.

“I feel that this is what good government is all about,” Mr. Hansen said. “We listened to what the opposition had to say, pumped the brakes and moved it through in a compromising fashion.”

Democrats in Nebraska’s 49-seat unicameral legislature did not see it that way. They expressed concern that the chief medical officer, who was appointed by the Republican governor, would establish onerous requirements to access puberty blockers and hormones.

“This has the potential to be a back door to a full ban,” said Senator John Fredrickson, a Democrat from Omaha who was among the lawmakers who filibustered for weeks in an effort to block the original transgender bill. “I don’t see this as a compromise in any way, shape or form.”

The bill says that puberty blockers and hormones may be prescribed to patients who have a “long-lasting and intense pattern of gender nonconformity or gender dysphoria which began or worsened at the start of puberty.” It establishes that those treatments may be administered only after a person has attended an unspecified number of psychotherapy sessions.

The bill is the latest in the nation’s fight over reproductive care. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June, 14 other states have banned most abortions. Restrictions are being fought in the courts in several states.

Democrats in Nebraska rejoiced last month when the effort to ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy fell short by a single vote. Senator Merv Riepe, a Republican, deemed the six-week ban too severe, dooming the bill’s passage. Mr. Riepe has signaled support for the proposed 12-week ban and voted in favor of efforts to merge the two issues this week.

Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican, hailed the move to advance both provisions with a single bill in a statement on Tuesday and thanked lawmakers for standing up “for common-sense, conservative values.” If the bill is approved on Friday, Mr. Pillen said he would sign it into law.

The fight over both issues shattered traditions of civility and bipartisanship in a state where lawmakers have long sought to remain removed from the divisiveness of national politics.

The intensity of the debate this year in Nebraska came partly because the transgender health care ban issue was deeply personal for Democrats. One of the chamber’s liberal lawmakers, Senator Megan Hunt, has a transgender son. During legislative debates, she angrily accused Republican colleagues of seeking to legislate away her parental rights.

Senator Machaela Cavanaugh, a Democrat who led efforts to filibuster to prevent Republicans from passing their original proposal, said those who opposed limits to abortion and transgender health care would continue to fight through the courts and other means. She said that the hard-fought legislative session had galvanized activism in Nebraska.

“I think the only victory in this is that trans people, especially trans youth, are no longer invisible,” she said.