Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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During a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood last week in Las Vegas, attendees heard news that underscored the need to support women’s access to reproductive health services in our community and our state.
To wit: Women in Texas are traveling all the way to Southern Nevada to receive services in the wake of Texas’ restrictive new abortion law.
In one respect, this wasn’t a surprise: With abortion all but outlawed in Texas and with services stretched thin in surrounding states by the resulting influx of Texans seeking care elsewhere, women are having to go far and wide to seek abortions.
But the fact that women are finding it necessary to come all the way to Las Vegas speaks volumes about the impact of the Texas law. For a Dallas resident, our city is a three-hour flight or an 18-hour drive each way — a significant investment in money and time.
And that’s for women who can afford the plane ticket or gasoline for their vehicle. Think how many cannot, and instead are trapped in a state where they can’t turn to a reputable physician to terminate a pregnancy, even one that is the result of rape or incest.
This is one of many ugly effects of the Texas law, which established a vigilante-style enforcement method in which anyone can sue a service provider or even someone who is aiding a woman in obtaining an abortion, such as someone driving a friend or loved one to a clinic. It effectively prohibits abortions beginning at six weeks after conception, a time at which many women don’t even know they’re pregnant.
The law has drawn several legal challenges, including one from the U.S. Justice Department, but for now it remains fully in effect.
Thank goodness Planned Parenthood is going strong in our community, though.
Las Vegas is part of the Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains organization, which provides care for nearly 100,000 people per year at 23 health centers in Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Southern Nevada. The organization operates two locations in Clark County.
In Nevada, abortion rights are written into our state Constitution thanks to a 1990 ballot question on the issue. The question, which was overwhelmingly approved by voters, reaffirmed a 1973 state law establishing the same protections affirmed in the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
Our current leadership in state government and the Legislature is committed to protecting this constitutional right of Nevada women. In 2019, state lawmakers approved a package of legislation that did away with antiquated criminal penalties for activities related to abortion, such as selling miscarriage-inducing drugs, and also approved a companion bill allocating $6 million in state grants for family planning.
Gov. Steve Sisolak, who along with his wife, Kathy, was honored at the Las Vegas fundraiser, spoke compassionately and off-script during the event about the importance of Planned Parenthood in his own life. Before marrying Kathy in 2018, Sisolak was a single father raising two daughters through young adulthood.
He joked about how teenage girls tend to be reluctant about sharing information on their sex lives with their fathers, and said “I can’t tell you how grateful I was to know my daughters had a safe place to go” for reproductive health and family planning.
Unfortunately, candidates who would try to take Nevada the wrong way on women’s reproductive health are seeking elected offices in 2022. They include Republican gubernatorial candidate Dean Heller, who said when announcing his campaign that he “likes what Texas did” on abortion and vowed to pass the “most conservative abortion laws that we can have” if elected. By all appearances, this was Heller pandering to conservative voters. He didn’t even know the full details of Texas’ law that he’s apparently so wild about — he admitted it himself. He’s also offered no specifics on what abortion laws he has in mind, nor has he detailed how he would go about enacting them, given the protections written into the state constitution.
But Nevada doesn’t need leaders who would work to change our course on this issue. We’re already seeing the desperation caused by Texas’ law, with women from the Lone Star State coming to Las Vegas.
Our state needs to make sure we’re equipped to provide reproductive health services to Nevada women and remain an option for women elsewhere whose leadership has left them without adequate protection.
