ABC reports that Nebraska’s Abortion Pain Prevention Act recently received a public hearing, with four hours of testimony by lawyers, doctors and advocates both for and against the proposed bill. 

The bill, which seeks to restrict abortions in Nebraska after 20 weeks, rather than the current 24 week viability threshold, and to remove mental health exceptions for the mother, attempts to use a scientifically unproven idea of a fetus’s ability to feel pain as a new factor.  State Sen. Mike Flood, the bill’s sponsor, and anti-choice advocates have pushed this bill even though the scientific community does not believe a fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks, and Nebraska didn’t have a single abortion after 20 weeks in 2008.

The bill in itself is a blatant attempt to revamp abortion laws across the country.  Flood admits he is attempting to set a “new standard,” by changing the argument from viability to alleged fetal pain.  And Dorothy Yeung of National Right to Life calls it a potential “turning point for abortion legislation across the nation.”

The bill will now be discussed in executive session, where it could be modified or dismissed all together.