Wow. Nebrakska’s taking a completely different tack in their quest to limit abortion – based on fetal pain.

Without dragging out all the science (much of which actually shows that the unborn most certainly feel pain) here’s how I check if I like an abortion bill – I check my pro-abort freakout-ometer readings. And let me tell you something, this newly minted Nebraska law is making my pro-abort freakout-ometer readings fly off the chart. Daily KOS, Huffpo and Reality Check (unlinked) have all got pieces up screeching that…gasp… women might not be able to kill their babies at will and that’s very very mean of conservatives to not let them.

The AP is reporting:

Nebraska lawmakers on Tuesday passed a groundbreaking bill banning abortions at 20 weeks based on assertions that fetuses feel pain then. Gov. Dave Heineman planned to sign it into law in the afternoon.

If upheld by the courts, the bill could change the foundation of abortion laws nationwide. Current restrictions in Nebraska and elsewhere are based on a fetus’s ability to survive outside the womb, or viability.

Viability is determined on a case-by-case basis but is generally considered to occur at 22 to 24 weeks.

This law which has already been signed by the Governor is a slap in the face of late term abortionist and all around creepy weirdo Dr. Leroy Carhart.

The Legislature makes the following findings:

At least by twenty weeks after fertilization there is substantial evidence that an unborn child has the physical structures necessary to experience pain;(2) There is substantial evidence that, by twenty weeks after fertilization, unborn children seek to evade certain stimuli in a manner which in an infant or an adult would be interpreted as a response to pain; (3) Anesthesia is routinely administered to unborn children who have developed twenty weeks or more past fertilization who undergo prenatal surgery; (4) Even before twenty weeks after fertilization, unborn children have been observed to exhibit hormonal stress responses to painful stimuli. Such responses were reduced when pain medication was administered directly to such unborn children; and (5) It is the purpose of the State of Nebraska to assert a compelling state interest in protecting the lives of unborn children from the stage at which substantial medical evidence indicates that they are capable of feeling pain.

I’m honestly unsure how effective this will be but it’s a new tactic to limit abortion so I’m all for it. It’ll obviously end up in the courts. But I’m unsure that if judges don’t care about the life of the unborn why would they care about the pain of the unborn?

Maybe it will. Maybe many people still don’t believe that there’s a baby in the womb and when confronted with the prospect of fetal pain people will have to admit there’s a sentient being in the womb. Maybe it’ll work. I pray to God it will.

Chelsea Zimmerman of Reflections of a Paralytic has a piece about the senses of the unborn.

LifeSite News has details on the story.