Friday, May 10, 2024 | 2 a.m.
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Last week, we marked the two-year anniversary of the leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and ripped away a woman’s right to choose. The day everything changed. Women have been taken back in time as our freedom to make decisions about our own bodies has been stripped away, and there is one person responsible: Donald Trump.
I am a first-generation Chilean American. My mom came to this country so we could have a better life. I hope to live in a world where my children and my children’s children have more rights than I do. But Trump threatens to take us backwards. He proudly brags that he killed Roe v. Wade and calls ripping away reproductive rights for millions of women an “incredible thing.”
If we all want the reality that I dream of for my kids and grandkids, the only path forward is four more years of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
I’m supporting the Democratic ticket because for them, there’s no question: Reproductive health care is health care. Trump and his allies will stop at nothing to rip reproductive freedoms away. It may be abortion now, but Trump’s extremist allies are already threatening in vitro fertilization and birth control, then who knows what’s next.
My mom and I both have endometriosis, a disorder in which tissue grows outside the uterus which can lead to inflammation, scarring, and cysts. It’s incredibly painful, and affects my ability to have a child one day. I take birth control pills because I need them to help manage my condition — so I don’t have to go to the emergency room every time I get my period. But Trump and his allies couldn’t care less about my right to contraception or any other reproductive care.
In a recent interview, Trump endorsed allowing states to prosecute women who have abortions and monitor their pregnancies. He also repeatedly refused to rule out signing a national abortion ban, and his allies plan to ban medication abortion.
Trump believes that overturning Roe — and the resulting extreme bans that are punishing women and threatening doctors across the country, like the near-total abortion ban that just went into effect in Florida — is “working the way it is supposed to.”
At 19, I shouldn’t have to fear for my future. The only way to end this horror movie of women’s rights getting stripped away is to reelect Biden and Harris. Here in Nevada, we may think our rights are safe as a pro-choice state, but even the strong protections we have wouldn’t protect us from a national abortion ban. Given the chance, Trump would undoubtedly sign such a ban in the blink of an eye. Don’t give him that chance.
We have a unique opportunity in Nevada to really make a difference this election. We are the last line of defense and we can stop a national abortion ban.
Carolyn Salvador Avila is a junior at UNLV. She is the national president of the College Democrats of America.
