The Dreadful State of Nebraska

For most of its history, Nebraska has been a conservative, solidly Republican state. In fact, the GOP has carried the state in all but one presidential election since 1940. The one exception being the landslide election of Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. It’s no surprise then that Nebraska also shares the conservative distaste for a woman’s right to choose.

Despite the state’s insistence that it champions civil rights activism, often citing the 1912 formation of Omaha’s chapter of the NAACP as proof, progressive politics have played an insignificant role in Nebraska’s history. But to say that all Nebraskans are neo-conservatives wouldn’t be fair either. The region has experienced serious issues with declining populations over the last decade, commonly known as “rural flight.” Eighty-nine percent of the cities in Nebraska have fewer than 3,000 people. Rural flight has so severely impacted the state that many of the schools have been forced to consolidate in order to remain operational. What Nebraska’s rural flight means to me, economics and housing aside, is that a good number of its citizens may be more progressive than not.

Nebraskan women who cherish their rights would certainly object to the state’s avowed intolerance for Roe v. Wade. In the summer of 2000, for instance, the Supreme Court ruled that a Nebraska law banning a controversial abortion procedure imposed an “undue burden” on women, and that it was too broad. The Court argued that the loose wording of the law could be construed to apply to all abortion procedures. This marked the first time in history since 1992’s reaffirmation of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that a major abortion dispute came before the Supreme Court. And Nebraska brought it.

But to really put a fine point on it, look what the upstanding folks of Nebraska did to Dr. LeRoy Carhart, one of the state’s three abortion providers and the filer of the lawsuit. Under the existing law of the time, Carhart would have faced felony charges resulting in the loss of his license and up to 20 years in prison, a $25,000 fine, or both. He won his case, but at the expense of his home and his animals, which the godly protectors of unborn life in Nebraska burned to the ground. They destroyed Carhart’s house and 17 horses, which were trapped in the barn when the blaze was set. The perpetrators also killed his dog and cat. The irony of situations like these makes it difficult to truly understand or sympathize with anti-abortion activists. Their message is ostensibly one of protecting life, and yet they so easily take it when it suits their needs.

Nebraska wants women to have their babies, even when the birth puts the lives of the mothers at risk. And who knows? Perhaps the fetus they save could grow up to be the next Kennedy or Obama or King or Hawking or Einstein or governor of Nebraska. Perhaps it could grow up to be the next Hitler or Hussein or Milosevic or McVeigh or Manson or Dahmer or bin Laden. It’s an interesting conundrum, really.

What needs to be examined is the societal and fiscal impact of outlawing abortion.

Without legalized abortions, thousands of women facing health risks from carrying the pregnancy to term could die, producing a generation of orphans left to the mercies of the state and an ill-equipped foster care system. And abortions will continue, but they will be performed illegally, at high cost, and in dangerous or unsanitary conditions. Without legalized abortions, more babies will be born to women in poorer socioeconomic groups, who will be the more likely to require public assistance. Outlawing abortion will increase the number of babies born addicted to or damaged by cocaine, heroin, nicotine, and alcohol. To outlaw abortion will create more dependent people, more welfare recipients, and will result in higher taxes and an increased burden on an already overtaxed and overburdened system. To outlaw abortion will cause poverty to escalate. Indigent families will be burdened with still more unwanted children, thereby reducing their standards of living even further. To outlaw abortion will increase the costs of social services paid for by the taxpayers. To outlaw abortion will result in increased child neglect, increased child abuse, and increased child abandonment. Which brings us to Nebraska today.

What states like Nebraska have failed to understand is that outlawing abortion does nothing to enforce or encourage parental responsibility. A ban on abortion will not prevent children from being unwanted or abandoned. Eliminating a woman’s right to choose is no guarantee that she will then choose to raise or take care of an unwanted child. For this reason, most states in the country have adopted “Safe Haven” laws, which protect “dumpster babies” by allowing desperate young mothers to abandon their newborns at hospitals without threat of prosecution. Although these laws have proven successful in mitigating infanticide, they have placed additional burdens on the country’s tattered foster care system, which is problematic and difficult to oversee.

The welfare of foster children is also a concern, with high incidents of reported abuse leading to more cases flooding the encumbered legal system. Then there’s the issue of adoption. The restrictions and costs placed on adopting a child are so extreme that most families have turned to overseas agencies, leaving American children to grow up as parentless wards of the state. Safe Haven surely offers no panacea, but in Nebraska they take even this a step too far.

Nebraska’s Safe Haven law is so ambiguously worded, that it allows parents to abandon any child under the age of 18. Because lawmakers there could not reach an agreement on an age, the law merely applies to a “child.” It begs the question: if you could legally abandon your child, for any reason, would you? In Nebraska, they apparently do.

Since the law’s inception, more teens have been abandoned than the newborns the law was designed to save. Out of 33 cases, more than half were teens. Of the 20 teenagers, six were 17-year-olds, two were 16-year-olds, six were 15-year-olds, three were 14-year-olds, and three were 13-year-olds. The eight children were between the ages of 11 and 12. Five of those children came from out of state. Officials have now aggravated the problem, after hesitating to respond, by announcing a special session to amend the disastrous law with wording that will clarify its application to newborns exclusively. Since notifying the public of the upcoming change, the volume of abandonments has tripled to about three per week. It seems that parents in Nebraska just can’t get rid of their kids fast enough.

Can you imagine placing your 17-year-old up for adoption? Because he didn’t mow the lawn? Because she wants to date the boy with the fast car? Because he or she has a learning disability or special needs? Can you imagine living with your child for nearly 20 years and then deciding you had no more love to give? You can’t make this argument with abortion. There’s no case to plead. The embryo has no personality, no developed intellect. You never met it or spent time with it. You didn’t watch it learn to walk and talk. You never read it bedtime stories or felt pride in its achievements. You were never disappointed with its behavior or amused by its antics. You never heard it say, “I love you.” It wasn’t viable, it wasn’t capable of these things, it wasn’t a person. But you lived all these moments with your teenage children.

It’s one thing, one very difficult and intimate decision, to abort an underdeveloped collection of cells and matter. No woman makes it lightly or eagerly. But it’s quiet another thing to be allowed to discard a human being.

In some cases, parents have dropped off their teens because they were frustrated with the responsibility of parenthood. One woman attempted to drop off her 18-year-old, believing she had no choice after a recent flurry of assault, stealing, sleeping around, and cutting school. To her credit, she is a foster parent and the teenager has a diagnosed mental illness and history of childhood abuse. But children, unlike old appliances, cannot be donated to Good Will or exchanged for a better model.

It’s amazing how mightily Nebraskans have struggled to prevent women from terminating unwanted pregnancies, regardless of the mother’s situation. Whether the pregnancy comes as a result of rape or abuse, or whether it endangers the mother’s life, Nebraska would rather deal with the severe social, economic, and psychological fallout of abandonment than allow termination procedures. Because, I suppose, that’s God’s will. And if you get bored with your teenager and decide to dispose of them on the hospital steps, I suppose that’s His will too. At least it is in Nebraska.