LINCOLN- On the first day of the 2022 legislative session, Nebraska lawmakers wasted no time diving into one of the most contentious political mires of the moment: abortion.

State Sen. Julie Slama of Sterling introduced a bill that would ban abortions after a so-called fetal heartbeat is detected.

Meanwhile, Sen. Megan Hunt of Omaha, who has pledged to fight any bans, introduced two bills to expand abortion access.

Slama’s bill, Legislative Bill 781, would require physicians, before they perform an abortion, to do an ultrasound and see whether they can detect a fetal “heartbeat.” A fetal heartbeat is defined in the bill as “cardiac activity or the steady and repetitive rhythmic contraction of the fetal heart within the gestational sac.”

Physicians can usually detect cardiac activity at about six weeks before many women know they’re pregnant.

The bill would make it illegal to perform an abortion if it’s been determined the fetus has a detectable “fetal heartbeat.”

In addition to Slama, 20 senators have signed onto the bill as cosponsors.

While abortion opponents, including the Nebraska Family Alliance, cheered the bill’s introduction Wednesday, abortion rights advocates reacted swiftly and strongly.

The ACLU of Nebraska issued a statement calling on senators to reject the bill, and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Nebraska also came out in opposition, calling it a “six-week ban.”

Scout Richters, legal and policy counsel at the ACLU of Nebraska, called LB 781 “one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the entire nation,” a “red alarm” and “just one step removed” from a law that passed last year in Texas. It “clearly violates” Roe v. Wade and U.S. Supreme Court precedent, she said.

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