During the Nebraska Unicameral Legislature's Wednesday debate over a fetal heartbeat bill that would ban abortions after six weeks in most cases, a right-wing lawmaker quoted a Bible passage to argue why terminating a pregnancy is a supposed abomination.
"With a brand new baby in her womb, carrying her new baby in her womb, she approaches Elizabeth. And John is in Elizabeth's womb. And the Holy Spirit is communicated in some miraculous, incredible way from the womb of the Virgin Mary in Jesus Christ himself to the womb of Elizabeth John the Baptist. And John lept," State Senator John S. Lowe (R-37th District) said, reciting Luke 1:41. "And that is why abortion is clearly evil. And that is why abortion is clearly evil."
His remarks were met with an eruption of laughter in the chamber. But Lowe was not the only Republican to proffer a bizarre defense of their party's effort to strip Nebraskans of their reproductive rights.
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"We have killed two hundred thousand babies since abortion became legal. Those are two hundred thousand people in the state of Nebraska that could be working and filling some of those positions that we have vacancies. They're not here. Our state population has not grown except by those foreigners who have moved here, or refugees who have been placed here," State Senator Steve Erdman (R-47th District) said. "Why is that? It's because we've killed two hundred thousand people. These are people we've killed."
To recap, the Nebraska Heartbeat Act "would ban abortions once cardiac activity can be detected" and contains "exceptions for rape, incest or if a mother's life is in danger" as well as "complications in pregnancies, miscarriage and in vitro fertilization," Omaha's KETV explains.
Medical experts have long maintained that there is no heart to generate a rhythm at six weeks. Instead, "the embryo will develop a tube that generates sporadic electrical impulses that eventually coordinate into rhythmic pulses. Six weeks of pregnancy is closer to four weeks of actual development, because pregnancy is measured from the first day of a woman's last period, before she is actually pregnant," NBC News noted last year.
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