Steve Marcus
Laura Campbell, director of actions at Nevada NOW, shares a private story throughout a roundtable on girls’s reproductive rights with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., at a Biden-Harris area workplace Thursday, June 20, 2024.
Sunday, July 21, 2024 | 2 a.m.
In a current op-ed within the Las Vegas Solar, Republican Senate candidate Sam Brown made the outrageous declare that the overturning of Roe v. Wade truly “strengthened Nevada’s protections for abortion.”
Brown’s assertion highlights his deeply flawed understanding of the difficulty of selection. For Brown to declare that this has in any method been good for reproductive freedom is absurd and offensive.
The truth is the Dobbs resolution, which overturned Roe v. Wade, has been a horrifying catastrophe for ladies and households — in Nevada and throughout our nation. Our reproductive rights have been gravely assaulted and proceed to stay underneath assault.
As govt director of Nevada NOW, I’ve seen and heard from girls who’ve needed to grapple with the horrible ramifications of a post-Roe world. Twenty-one states throughout the nation have enacted abortion bans or restrictions since Dobbs, together with Arizona, Utah, and Idaho — all of which border Nevada. Ladies and even younger ladies have been the sufferer of rape or incest, and grow to be pregnant consequently. However due to the Dobbs resolution, they’ve been denied entry to reproductive care that they as soon as had protected.
Let’s be clear: Dobbs has put reproductive freedom in Nevada in jeopardy. Sure, we’re a proud pro-choice state; however with out the federal protections that Roe gave us — protections that Sam has repeatedly mentioned he opposes — it might be far too simple for anti-choice extremists like him to get rid of the state-level protections that Nevada fortunately does have.
Brown was a robust proponent of a Texas abortion ban with out exceptions for rape or incest that was thought-about one of many “hardest restrictions within the nation.” Brown additionally managed the political marketing campaign of a “100% pro-life, no exceptions” congressional candidate in Texas.
Simply two years in the past, Brown ran for Senate in Nevada on an excessive anti-choice platform that included banning abortion with out exceptions for victims of rape or incest, and leaving the door open to supporting a federal ban. After shedding that race, he turned the native president of a nationwide anti-abortion group that referred to as Roe v. Wade a “ethical atrocity.”
Brown has mentioned that his views opposing abortion are “non-negotiable,” and even now, when there’s a measure on the poll in November that may additional strengthen Nevada’s protections for reproductive freedom, Brown refuses to reply if he’d help it — as a result of it’s clear that he wouldn’t.
Earlier than the Dobbs resolution, many thought the protections of Roe v. Wade would stand without end. Quite a few far-right justices promised the American folks that the difficulty was settled and Roe was the legislation of the land — till they overturned it. Now, Brown seems to be operating the very same rip-off. I don’t purchase it, and neither must you.
This November, Nevadans have a selection. We are able to entrust our reproductive freedoms to somebody like incumbent Sen. Jacky Rosen, who has a lifelong report of supporting girls’s freedom to make their very own well being care choices, or the guarantees of Brown, whose previous phrases and actions present that he can’t be trusted to face up for our reproductive rights. Rosen is an endorsed candidate by the Nationwide NOW PAC.
I urge all Nevadans to decide on fastidiously.
Sue Burtch is govt director of Nevada NOW, the state chapter of the Nationwide Group for Ladies community.
