OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Tea Rohrberg was heading into her county's treasurer's office in Omaha, Nebraska, on Monday when she says she was approached by a man and asked if she wanted to sign a “pro-choice petition.” Because she believes access to abortion is a right all women should have, she readily signed.
But Rohrberg soon learned from a different volunteer that she had actually signed a petition being circulated by Protect Women and Children, which seeks to ask voters in November to codify Nebraska's new 12-week abortion ban in the state constitution. She approached the man who she said had coerced her into signing the petition by calling it a “pro-choice” measure. She told him she wanted to cross her name off the petition.
He told her he'd cross it off later, she said. “I was like, ‘No, I just want my name off it.' Then he said, 'Well then just vote no later,'" she said.
What she did instead was head to the Omaha office of Protect Our Rights, which is seeking to enshrine abortion rights in the Nebraska Constitution, to file a notarized affidavit to have her name officially removed. She then signed the organization's petition to protect abortion rights through fetal viability or at any time in pregnancy to protect the health of the woman. Rohrberg is far from alone in being misled to sign a Nebraska abortion petition.
The Nebraska Secretary of State's office said that by late Friday, it had received 91 affidavits from voters seeking to have their names removed fro.
