Abortion-rights demonstrators protest the U.S. Supreme Courts decision to overturn Roe v. Wade during a rally in downtown Las Vegas Friday, June 24, 2022.
Sunday, June 23, 2024 | 2 a.m.
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Monday marks the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, reversing nearly fifty years of legal precedent and paving the way for cruel abortion bans in states across this country.
Since then, we’ve heard horrific stories of women experiencing a miscarriage or young girls who have been raped that are unable to get the medical care they need. We’ve seen states like Arizona try to enforce an abortion ban from the 1800s. We’ve watched as women have been forced to leave their home states like Texas and Florida to receive potentially life-saving care.
This is the world that anti-abortion extremists have pushed for, and we know that they won’t stop there. Far-right groups have led lawsuits seeking to take away access to FDA-approved medication abortion, and that threatens access to abortion care in emergency rooms. And with the next election now just a few months away, the terrifying reality is that if MAGA Republicans take control of the Senate and the White House, they could have the power to push through a nationwide abortion ban that would override existing protections in Nevada.
We must not let that happen. That’s why I’ve been working in the Senate to enshrine the protections of Roe v. Wade into federal law, block any attempts to enact a nationwide abortion ban and defend the right of women to make their own decisions about their bodies.
My opponent, Sam Brown, has a decadelong anti-abortion record. If elected, Brown’s record indicates he would vote alongside Mitch McConnell to roll back abortion access nationwide and impose more restrictions on our reproductive freedom. He has repeatedly supported banning abortion, including a Texas abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest. He pushed to overturn Roe and said he would only vote for antichoice Supreme Court Justices. He has even said his hardline stances are “nonnegotiable.”
Brown’s anti-abortion views are dangerous, wrong and completely out of step with Nevadans. The voters of our state overwhelmingly support a woman’s right to make health care decisions, and they do not want interference from politicians in their private medical decisions.
The policies he’s supported have already impacted the lives of real women in Nevada. I recently met with Valerie Peterson, a mother of two who lived in Texas at the same time that Sam Brown did. After becoming pregnant with her third child, Valerie tragically learned there was a fetal anomaly. Doctors advised her that, should she carry the pregnancy to term, the baby would not survive, and so Valerie made the difficult decision to end the pregnancy.
However, because of a harmful abortion ban that Sam Brown supported, Valerie was forced to flee her home in Texas to get the care she needed. The loss of her pregnancy was an absolutely heartbreaking experience for Valerie and her family, one made all the more devastating by the cruel roadblocks put in place by extremists like Brown.
Valerie now lives in Nevada, and she is bravely speaking out against the impact of Sam Brown’s anti-abortion agenda and warning voters about the threat he poses to reproductive freedom.
Valerie’s story is a powerful reminder of what’s at stake this November. Without a pro-choice majority in the Senate, we won’t have that critical firewall to stop Republican attempts to pass new anti-abortion laws and confirm anti-abortion nominees.
Nevada voters have a clear choice in this race between my record of working to try to restore reproductive freedom and Brown’s demonstrated record of fighting to take away a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions.
While my opponent will give you empty promises and phony talking points from now until November, you can count on me to never stop fighting until reproductive freedom is protected by federal law — for women in Nevada and everywhere else in the United States.
Jacky Rosen is a U.S. senator representing Nevada.
