Nevada Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro speaks to the media regarding womens reproductive rights during a news conference with U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Adrienne Mansanares, chief experience officer at Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains Friday Sept. 17 2021.
Tuesday, April 30, 2024 | 2 a.m.
Fifteen percent of the women seeking abortion care in Las Vegas since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 reversed its ruling in the landmark Roe v. Wade case are from out of state, according to data from Planned Parenthood.
And, Planned Parenthood says, many of those women are coming from Texas, Utah and Arizona — states where Republican lawmakers are in the majority and have pushed legislation limiting women’s reproductive rights.
Overall, since the Supreme Court removed a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion and left the decision to individual states, Las Vegas clinics are reporting a 40% increase in abortion care patients here.
The increase here started “as soon as (the reversal) trigger laws went into effect and you get something like 14 states that completely ban abortions, and we’re seeing other states take efforts to significantly restrict the ability to access any sort of care,” Nevada Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, D-Las Vegas, told the Sun last week.
And more patients could be heading here from Arizona, where the state Supreme Court this month reinstated a law from 1864 banning all abortions unless the mother’s health is at risk.
There have been 400 Arizona residents who have come to Nevada for an abortion in the nearly two years since Dobbs passed, marking a 110% increase, according to Planned Parenthood. Those patients traveling here seeking reproductive health care put a strain on our medical infrastructure, Cannizzaro said.
“It’s definitely top of mind for us,” the majority leader said. “We went to make sure that we can access care, because there are lots of Nevadans who need to be able to get in and see an OB-GYN for all kinds of reasons. If we don’t have enough providers or if those providers are strained because we have such a load on the system that they can’t keep up, that puts everybody’s health at risk.”
Cannizzaro during the 2023 Nevada Legislature sponsored Senate Bill 131 that prohibits assisting in the prosecution or extradition of a person charged in another state for a crime related to reproductive health care.
The bill, which was signed into law by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, codifies an executive order then-Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, signed two years earlier into law saying the state wouldn’t cooperate with the effort to criminalize the actions.
“You have to think about this as someone who is pregnant, who thinks that there’s something wrong and they’re afraid to go to their doctor and ask that question because they are potentially facing jail time,” she said. “If their doctor answers that question, that particular way, their doctor could be facing jail time. That doesn’t exist in Nevada.”
Cannizzaro has been a vocal supporter of President Joe Biden’s re-election efforts, which last week saw Biden in Tampa, Fla., looking to energize Democrats in a state where a six-week abortion ban is poised to go into effect May 1.
Nevada has a voter-affirmed statute that guarantees a woman’s right to an abortion up to 24 weeks. And while it would be difficult to make changes to that state law, it is not impossible.
Voters here in 1990 approved a ballot question allowing a woman to obtain an abortion by a physician within the first 24 weeks of a pregnancy. The question further stated that the statute “will remain in effect and cannot be changed, except by a direct vote of the people.”
That means opponents of abortion would have to launch a new statewide ballot initiative, collect the required number of signatures from registered voters across the state and then win a majority of votes in two successive general elections.
A group is hoping to put to rest the potential for that effort by anti-abortion proponents.
Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom launched a campaign in February to get a ballot question on the November ballot that would codify the right to an abortion into the state constitution. The petition must have over 102,392 signatures — including over 25,000 from each of Nevada’s four congressional districts — by June 26.
If the petition receives the signatures it will be put on the state ballot in November. If the measure passes, the amendment will then appear on the 2026 general election ballot. If the measure passes, the amendment will then appear on the 2026 general election ballot.
“We have in the wake of Dobbs, and Nevada is not immune to this, seen attacks on the ability to access birth control, the ability to access (mifepristone), which is primarily used in miscarriage management, and also other kinds of procedures that assist with miscarriage management,” Cannizzaro said.
A Texas judge last year ruled to suspend the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, which has been deemed safe for ending pregnancies for more than two decades. Just hours after the ruling, a U.S. District Court judge in Washington barred the FDA from taking action to reduce the availability of mifepristone in 16 states, including Nevada.
The back-and-forth is a snapshot of post-Roe America, and something Democrats will be heavily campaigning on in the months leading to the November election. One in seven women in states with abortion bans says they know someone who has had difficulty accessing reproductive health care post-Roe, an April survey from the The Kaiser Family Foundation found.
The survey, which the foundation said had 1,316 adult respondents nationally, additionally found that 12% of voters say abortion is the most pressing issue in their vote.
Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom said last week the signature collection effort reached the halfway point of the goal needed to be on the ballot. The group said it is on track to have valid signatures by the June 26 deadline.
“The status of abortion access and reproductive healthcare nationwide has never been more in peril,” said Tova Yampolsky, the Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom’s campaign manager, when the campaign launched in February. “As more neighboring states are passing more restrictive anti-abortion laws, it is even more critical now than ever that we expand access to health care and codify that in the Nevada state constitution.”
