First Lady Jill Biden, center, listens to women discuss their concerns about gun violence, reproductive rights and other topics at Eat restaurant in downtown Las Vegas Saturday, March 2, 2024. The event was part of a nationwide program to organize and mobilize female voters.
Saturday, March 2, 2024 | 4:25 p.m.
First lady Jill Biden called the increasing restrictions on women’s healthcare “a rupture in the foundations of our democracy” during a speech in Las Vegas darkened by a power outage Saturday.
Biden and others spoke at the Service Employees International Union Local 1107, underscoring reproductive rights as a central campaign focus for President Joe Biden.
High winds across the state cut power to the event, forcing speakers to deliver their message under flickering lights.
The first lady’s visit to Las Vegas is the third leg of a larger “Women for Biden-Harris” initiative, looking to garner support in several key states across the country for President Joe Biden’s reelection.
Jill Biden highlighted that Nevada was the first state to have a majority-female state legislature in 2018 and called on Nevadan women to support the president. Nevadan women were a large part of what won Biden the state by just 2.9% in the 2020 against Donald Trump, his likely November opponent. More than 54% of women who voted in the Silver State chose him, compared to 48% who voted for Trump, according to a CNN exit poll. In Clark County that number was even higher, with 58% of women voting for Biden.
That trend might not continue. According to a February poll from Emerson College that surveyed 1,000 likely Nevada voters, women in Nevada prefer Biden over Trump by less than a single percent point: 42.9% against Trump’s 42%.
That poll also showed Trump ahead of Biden in the general election, with 46% of voters favoring Trump and 40% for Biden.
Several Nevadan Congresswomen also spoke at the event, including Senator Jacky Rosen, D-Nev, who admonished Republican-majority state legislatures for restricting abortion access. All criticized Trump at length for what the first lady called “a lifetime of tearing down women.”
“Are we going to allow MAGA extremists to drag us further backwards?” Rosen said during the event. “This is the future anti-abortion republicans have worked toward, but this is not the future Americans want.”
An Alabama judge’s ruling on in vitro fertilization in the state has incurred national ridicule as Republicans across the United States scramble to express their support for IVF, and it was a significant focus during the event. Rep. Lee hammered on abortion rights and women’s healthcare, sharing that she had both of her two children with the help of IFV.
“This election is about women maintaining their freedom and choice,” Lee said. “Infertility is an illness, IVF is a treatment and abortion is healthcare.”
Nevada resident and IVF recipient Cyndy Flores spoke about her experience and why the judge’s ruling and Republicans’ anti-abortion efforts are a danger to women in the country.
Trump suggested he would support a 15-week limit on abortion in a Fox News interview Thursday. “Alabama may be the first state where extremists rip away access to IVF, but we can’t expect it to be the last,” Flores said during the event.
Several attendees, including local advocacy group Nevada Now, collected signatures for a petition to codify abortion access into the Nevada Constitution. Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom launched a campaign for the petition last week at their own event on the College of Southern Nevada’s North Las Vegas campus.
When Rep. Lee asked attendees if they had signed the petition, nearly every person in the room raised their hand. “Anytime anybody who has that platform to talk about abortion and talk about choice, it's important,” said Laura Campbell, Nevada Now director of action. “That's what we need to be able to get people out there, especially to vote and to sign this petition.”
Biden ended her speech with a call to action, encouraging women to see the election as a lynchpin in securing reproductive rights in the country. “We’re going to meet this moment as if our rights are on the line, because they are,” Biden said.
Following the event, the first lady went to “eat.” restaurant to have a sit-down with several Nevada women including Nevada Now’s Campbell to talk about key issues affecting Nevada and the rest of the U.S. Campbell spoke about her experience with having children, including a miscarriage and abortion. Campbell said she was fortunate to live in a state where she had options on how to go about her pregnancies.
“Not everybody has the resources that I had,” Campbell said.
