Nevadans in November will vote on a ballot question aimed at enshrining abortion rights in the state Constitution, and will chose among slates of candidates who either tout their long-standing support of reproductive rights, or who are softening their previous—and more radical—positions on abortion.
Democrats, most of whom have long championed access to abortion, are hoping the issue will bring more voters to the polls. The GOP has consistently backed limiting access to the procedure—or banning it completely.
Abortion has been on the ballot in seven states since the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision in June 2022. In every instance, in both red states and blue states, anti-abortion advocates have lost.
“The GOP is showing how worried it is about the abortion issue with all the backfilling, changing their minds, going back and forth on it and trying to unsay what they have said. That’s true at the national and state party levels.”
Michael Green, Nevada historian
Michael Green, associate professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the author of books about Nevada history and politics, said the issue will presumably boost voter turnout in November. A July 2022 poll of Nevada registered voters by The Nevada Independent and OH Predictive Insights found that abortion ranked second behind the economy as the issue most motivating respondents to vote.
“I think it will help (turnout),” Green said. “The GOP is showing how worried it is about the abortion issue, with all the backfilling, changing their minds, going back and forth on it and trying to unsay what they have said. That’s true at the national and state party levels. And if they do want to leave it to the states, that fits their ideology, but there’s still talk of a national ban.”
Nevada voters in 1990 approved a law that makes abortion available up to 24 weeks of pregnancy and carves out exceptions to that time limit, but laws can be repealed easier than an amendment to the state Constitution. Nevada is among at least nine states where pro-choice advocates are campaigning to strengthen abortion access. Without national protections, it is up to the states to regulate abortions.
That creates a patchwork of laws across the country. Presently, 41 states have some sort of abortion bans in effect, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization. Fourteen of those states have a total ban on abortions; seven more states ban abortion at or before 18 weeks’ gestation; and 20 states ban abortion at some point after 18 weeks. Nine states and the District of Columbia do not restrict abortion based on gestational duration.
Nevada’s ballot measure would amend the state’s Constitution to guarantee a “fundamental right to abortion” until “fetal viability” (which the law now puts at 24 weeks) or when needed to protect the life or health of the pregnant patient. For the amendment to be added to the state’s founding document, voters must approve the question—called the Nevada Right to Abortion Initiative—both in 2024 and 2026.
‘Doubling down’ on protections
Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom, the group behind the initiative, submitted 200,000 signatures in support of getting the measure on the ballot, nearly twice the number required. About 128,000 signatures were deemed valid by the Nevada Secretary of State’s office, more than enough to get the matter in front of voters.
“We can’t take anything for granted,” after the defeat of Roe v. Wade, said Lindsey Harmon, president of Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom, at a news conference in June. “That’s why we are really doubling down on the protections we have in statute currently. … The majority of Nevadans agree that the government should stay out of their personal and private decisions … about our bodies, our lives and our futures.”
The anti-abortion group Nevada Right to Life opposes the ballot measure. Spokesperson Krystal Minera-Alvis said in a statement in June that the proposed amendment is “based on lies” and is funded by “out-of-state dark money.” She noted abortion rights are already codified in state law. “As an organization, we stand firm on the fact that this amendment is unsafe and dangerous for women of all ages,” Minera-Alvis said in the statement.
Nevada Right to Life did not reply to the Reno News & Review’s multiple voicemail and email requests for an interview—or the newspaper’s request that the group elaborate on Minera-Alvis’ arguments against the proposed amendment.
Both national and statewide surveys show overwhelming support for access to abortion services. According to a national poll done in April by the Pew Research Center, 63% of respondents said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. An October 2021 poll of 800 registered Nevada voters conducted by OH Predictive Insights found that 69% of respondents described themselves as pro-choice.
In the recent Pew study, which polled 8,709 registered voters, 57% of Republicans said abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, while 41% said it should be legal in all or most cases. Among Democrats, 85% said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and just 14% said it should be illegal.
Well aware of public opinion and the divisions within their own party, Republicans from Donald Trump on down the ballot have shifted their stances on abortion, now saying they don’t support a national ban and that regulation should be left to the states. Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate, for example, previously favored outlawing abortion nationally, but now says the states should decide for themselves.
Brown backpedals; Rosen attacks
Sam Brown, the Republican candidate who will face Sen. Jacky Rosen on the Nov. 5 ballot, began tweaking his position on reproductive rights in February, when he told NBC News that he would not support a federal abortion ban. During the interview, Brown’s wife, Amy, revealed she had an abortion when she was 24, before she met her husband.
The GOP candidate told NBC he would respect Nevada’s abortion law protecting access to abortions through 24 weeks of pregnancy. Since then, Brown has consistently declined to say how he will vote on the proposed constitutional amendment. His campaign did not respond to the RN&R’s requests for comment.
Brown, a retired Army captain who served in Afghanistan, has a history of opposing abortion and backing extreme restrictions on the procedure. When he was campaigning for a seat in the Texas statehouse in 2014, he expressed support for a proposed 20-week abortion ban, as first reported by The Nevada Independent. During a debate in 2014, Brown said his stance on the Texas law was “non-negotiable.” In 2018, Brown served as campaign manager for a Texas congressional candidate who backed a total ban on abortions with no exceptions, as reported by the Nevada Current. During a GOP primary debate with Adam Laxalt in 2022, Brown indicated he would consider backing a national ban on abortions.
In November 2022, Brown was appointed chairman of the Nevada chapter of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, an arm of a national anti-choice group. The parent organization supports a federal ban on abortion and called Roe v. Wade a “moral atrocity.” The group also opposes federal protections for same-sex and interracial marriage. Brown’s campaign told the Las Vegas Sun he didn’t do any work for the group after May 2023 and has resigned his position on the board. His campaign has described his job as a “volunteer” post. The group’s website has since scrubbed nearly all references to Brown from its pages.
The candidate’s campaign website notes that he is “pro-life” and states he “will oppose any bill that pushes for federal funding of abortion, late term abortions, or abortion without parental notification” and “will support federal judges who understand the importance of protecting life.”
Brown may have hoped his recent pivot would blunt abortion rights as a campaign issue, but Sen. Jacky Rosen has made reproductive freedom the spear point of her effort to retain her seat in the Senate, where Democrats now hold a slim majority.
One of Rosen’s TV ads labels her opponent as a “MAGA extremist who would take away abortion rights.” The commercial reviews Brown’s previous statements about banning the procedure. Another Rosen campaign ad spotlights a Nevada woman who, while living in Texas, learned that the fetus she carried would probably not survive because its brain was separated from its spinal cord. She was unable to get an abortion because of the law that Brown had supported, she said.
“Because of the law Sam Brown pushed for, I had to leave Texas to get the care that I needed,” Valerie Peterson says in the ad. “Now I live in Nevada, and I can’t watch Sam Brown take away our rights here, too.”
On his website, Brown calls Rosen’s attacks on his record “fearmongering” and insists the demise of Roe v. Wade “strengthened Nevada’s protections for abortion by confirming this choice is decided by states.”
‘Settled law’—until it isn’t
Rosen says Brown is gaslighting voters by adopting a softer position on abortion. She is urging Nevadans to pay attention to what he’s been saying for a decade, rather than what he says now in the midst of a campaign.
“Nevadans have a choice this election between a senator who has always fought for reproductive freedom, or someone with a decade-long record of wanting to take away abortion rights,” Rosen said. “Sam Brown will say anything to try and get elected, and that includes desperately trying to hide his long anti-choice record. Nevadans know he cannot be trusted, and they won’t fall for his cover-up.”
She told the RN&R that Nevadans “deserve the freedom to make these deeply personal medical decisions free from interference by politicians. Sam Brown’s record makes clear that he disagrees.”
Green, of UNLV, said some voters may feel access to abortions is safe because the Nevada law has been in force for more than 30 years, but he noted that Roe v. Wade was the law of the land for 49 years before it was struck down.
“Abortion rights have a long history of being safe in Nevada, based on the 1990 referendum,” he said. “But if you look at the Supreme Court justices’ confirmation hearings for the various Republican appointees, Roe v. Wade was safe, too. They called it ‘settled law,’ although I don’t know why anyone thought they meant it.”
This year, abortion casts a long shadow over all congressional campaigns.
In the Silver State’s contests for the House of Representatives, all three Democratic incumbents —Steven Horsford, Dina Titus and Susie Lee—have been endorsed by Reproductive Freedom for All, a national advocacy group. Rep. Mark Amodei, the lone Republican in the Nevada congressional delegation, and the representative for Northern Nevada, describes himself as “pro-life” on his website and has said he respects Nevada’s abortion rights law as reflecting the will of the state’s voters.
Abortion isn’t included among the issues listed on his site’s position pages. But Amodei’s statement on the demise of Roe v. Wade says: “In Congress, my voting record and legislative actions will continue to reflect my commitment to protecting life. This includes preserving the Hyde Amendment and preventing the taxpayer funding of abortions and opposing the majority party’s abortion-on-demand agenda.”
Green said that some Republican politicians may have changed their minds about reproductive rights, but their sudden shift on abortion policies looks like “a case of changing your mind to stay alive politically and raising the question of whether you really mean it,” he said.
“The defeat of Roe v. Wade is not the end or the limit,” Green said. “When you have candidates (in other states) who oppose in vitro fertilization, they are going well beyond the notion that a fetus is human. They are pushing it back much further.”
Reproductive rights? The right to kill a human life if you screw up and don’t use birth control. I am for abortion in the case of incest, rape or the life of the mother. Otherwise it is a license to kill for lazy people. At what point do democrats say the fetus is a life? 4 weeks? 4 months? 8 months? When it is crying? Should a mother have the right to kill her 1 week old cause she changed her mind?
An acorn is not an oak, an egg is not a chicken, a zygote, embryo or fetus is not a human. Just facts. No religion or opinion can change facts.
At some point the acorn becomes a tree, an egg becomes a chicken…at some point a fetus is a human and becomes a life… How would you be affected if you were the doctor removing an 8 month old fetus from a woman…?