Sunday, Jan. 21, 2024 | 2 a.m.
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Monday marks is the 51st anniversary of the Supreme Court’s historic decision in Roe v. Wade, which provided constitutional protections for women’s right to choose and finally allowed women across the country the freedom to control their bodies. Jan. 22 is supposed to be a celebratory day. Now, it’s a reminder of just how much we have lost thanks to Donald Trump and his extreme Republican allies.
Trump has boasted about appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe in 2022 and ripped away reproductive freedom from millions of women. MAGA Republicans in state legislatures were quick to implement life-threatening abortion bans without room for nuance. We’ve seen horrifying stories in the news about the women affected by these bans. Kate Cox had to leave Texas to get an abortion after the state Supreme Court blocked her from receiving care — despite her life being in danger. It’s not just women, either. It’s girls. A mere month after the fall of Roe, a 10-year-old girl and rape victim was forced to travel from Ohio to Indiana so that she could get the care she needed.
Our state has become an asylum for women seeking abortion access, with the number of out-of-state patients traveling to Southern Nevada having doubled since Roe ceased to exist. I was proud to introduce Senate Bill 131 to protect women traveling to Nevada for abortion care, as well as providers, from being criminalized. This is just one of the many steps my Democratic colleagues in the legislature and I have taken to ensure that the rights of women in Nevada are fully preserved.
If Trump and other MAGA Republicans running up and down our ballot get the opportunity, however, they’ll do whatever it takes to override our state law, rip away those protections, and put more women’s lives at risk.
Trump has made it clear time and time again that he supports the federal government playing a role in banning abortion nationwide and has said that without him, anti-choice states wouldn’t be able to implement their dangerous bans. He has made it clear where he stands since running for his first term as president, when he stated that there should be “some form of punishment” for women who receive abortion care. Let’s also make it clear that this isn’t just empty campaign messaging, either. While he was president, he actively sought to pass a federal abortion ban. He is as extreme as it gets, and he’ll only double down on his attempts to restrict abortion rights if he gets another term in office.
In contrast, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have been staunch champions for women’s reproductive freedom. They support women being able to have access to not only abortion care, but contraception as well so that they can choose their own destinies — not be forced onto one life path because conservatives gave them no other choice. While Republicans in Congress have tried over and over again to attack reproductive rights, the Biden administration has fought to strengthen women’s access to emergency medical care, defended FDA approval of medication abortion, and called on Congress to codify abortion rights at the federal level. President Biden and Vice President Harris are the leaders that we need in the White House because they’re committed to expanding our rights — not restricting them.
A vote for Trump is a vote for a national abortion ban — harming women in every state, including Nevada. Electing President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats down the ballot is the only way to safeguard their hard-won rights. Women’s reproductive freedoms hang in the balance of November’s elections, and we must vote accordingly.
Nicole Cannizzaro represents District 6 in the Nevada Senate, where she also serves as majority leader.
