Nevada Republicans criticize Democrats for politicizing abortion

Republicans are slamming Nevada Democrats for making an election-year push to put abortion rights on the ballot as Democrats work to activate voter engagement this November.

Nevada Right to Life Director Melissa Clement slammed the ballot measure that seeks to codify abortion rights up to 28 weeks, telling the Los Angeles Times that Democrats are “taking one of the most difficult and traumatic decisions a woman can make and using it for political fodder.”

The Ballot Initiative Strategy Center told the Washington Examiner that the Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom coalition has submitted almost twice the number of signatures needed to qualify the expanded abortion measure for the November ballot.

Democrats, including Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), are fighting to expand Nevada’s current law, which allows abortion at 24 weeks. The ballot measure would legalize abortions after the point of fetal viability, when the baby is able to survive outside the womb. According to some medical professionals, that point is now around 22 weeks.

Caroline Sanchez-Avakian, the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center’s director of strategic communications, told the Washington Examiner the measure would ensure “a fundamental, individual right to abortion” while allowing Nevada to regulate the “provision of abortion after fetal viability … except where necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant individual.”

Despite polls showing that issues such as housing affordability and inflation are top of mind for voters, Democrats continue to wield the abortion debate in Nevada as they aim to defend vulnerable seats across the Silver State. Reproductive Freedom for All, an abortion rights organization, is focusing on Nevada as part of an effort to target battleground states this cycle.

One of Nevada’s most competitive races is the battle shaping up between Rosen and Sam Brown, the Republican front-runner to challenge Rosen for her Senate seat. Rosen, a vulnerable incumbent Democrat, has called Brown “a direct threat to Nevadans’ reproductive freedom” as she battles to keep her Senate seat.

Brown and his wife have attracted national attention for sharing their personal experience with abortion. In February, Amy Brown shared during an interview with NBC that she felt pressured by healthcare providers into having an abortion in 2008. Amy Brown said the healthcare industry didn’t walk her through alternative options and that she didn’t have the support system she needed to make an informed decision.

“When I made my choice, [to have an abortion] I was under the impression that I was choosing freedom,” she said. “But I did not receive freedom. I received a five-year sentence to living with regret and shame.”

“We’ve boiled the pro-life movement down to legislation and policy. … It should be so much more,” she said. “It should be building awareness. It should be building advocacy and increasing support for women before, during, and after pregnancy.”

Sam Brown agreed, saying: “Amy, to me, is just a really personal example that what we hear, whether it’s out of politicians … is missing the point that there is at least a woman who is really going through something that might just be one of the most challenging things in her life.”

Sam Brown signaled he’s taking a more holistic approach to anti-abortion issues than some in the GOP.

“Shame on us if we allow the narratives and the positioning to miss the fact that she is doing that alone. She is doing that with almost no advocacy, no support,” the GOP candidate said. “There was no environment of acknowledgment and a culture that says women who find themselves in an unexpected pregnancy … that we need to take care of those women.”

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Former President Donald Trump endorsed the retired Army captain on Sunday, giving the GOP candidate a boost heading into the Tuesday primary. The latest polling shows Rosen leading Brown in a hypothetical matchup, 40% to 38%.

In Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District, Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV) is also vulnerable this November. Seven Republicans are fighting a primary battle to challenge Lee this November, including well-funded front-runner Marty O’Donnell.