Nebraska Lawmakers Shielded ‘Clearly Ill’ Colleague Who Left the Hospital to Help Ban Abortion
Sen. Julie Slama's (R) colleagues helped her hide from TV cameras as she gave the GOP the vote they needed to limit abortion and ban gender-affirming care.
AbortionPolitics

Nebraska’s unicameral legislature passed a Frankenstein bill on Friday that bans both gender-affirming care for minors and abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy. Republicans were so intent on passing the hateful legislation that not only did one lawmaker complain how filibusters made her miss her grandson’s preschool graduation, but another left the hospital so she could vote for it.
Reporter Paul Hammel of the Nebraska Examiner shared a photo on Twitter of State Sen. Julie Slama (R) seated at a desk looking “clearly ill,” as he put it, and noted that a bipartisan group of of lawmakers both for and against the bill stood around the desk in an attempt to block TV cameras from filming her. Hammel said Slama left the hospital to be there and thanks to her presence, Legislative Bill 574 passed by the minimum number of votes to avoid a filibuster, 33-15. (The chamber has 49 members and needs a two-thirds vote to overcome a filibuster.)
Slama re-shared the photo and said she’d been hospitalized with hyperemesis gravidarum, a rare but serious form of morning sickness that can result in weight loss and dehydration. Slama said she made it back to the Capitol building in time to vote for LB 574 and thanked her colleagues who “put their differences aside” to create a wall around her.