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Nevada’s GOP Governor Signs Democratic Abortion Proposal Into Law

The bill forbids the state from sharing information with others over who
has traveled to Nevada to obtain an abortion.

Nevada Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo signed into law on Tuesday a bill that provides greater reproductive and privacy rights protections for
individuals coming to the state seeking abortion services.

With several states across the country enacting abortion bans or severe restrictions, following the Supreme Court last summer overturning the
landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade, several other states that have
kept or even expanded abortion rights have anticipated that some residents
in those restrictive areas may travel to them in order to obtain the
procedure.

Nevada is likely to be one of those states, given its history of
supporting abortion access — the state passed a bill in 1973, immediately
after Roe was decided, codifying the right to an abortion, although it
does restrict it past 24 weeks of pregnancy. In 1990, a ballot initiative passed wherein voters added those protections to the state constitution as well, making them reversible only if a similar ballot overturning them
occurs.


With polling showing that a majority of Nevadans support keeping abortion rights in place, such a reversal is highly unlikely.

Concerned, however, that travelers to the state seeking abortion services
could still be punished by state legislatures elsewhere, through potential
laws forbidding such ventures, former Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat,
issued an executive order in June last year, when he was in office,
forbidding state agencies from cooperating with other states in
investigations of those travelers. That executive order became a campaign
issue when Sisolak and Lombardo squared off against each other in the 2022 gubernatorial election, which Lombardo won.



By
Chris Walker ,
Truthout

May 31, 2023

During the campaign season, Lombardo frequently waffled on the issue,
sometimes expressing support for more restrictive abortion measures and
other times saying he had no intention of changing the standard that
voters had endorsed in 1990. Lombardo, who has described himself as a “pro-life” Catholic and who has also voiced support for restricting
certain kinds of birth control, at one point said he’d sign into law a
bill that would codify Sisolak’s order rather than extend the executive
order if he won the governorship.

Democrats in the state legislature held him to his word, and passed Senate
Bill 131, which would indeed codify Sisolak’s previous order, earlier this month. On Tuesday, Lombardo, who received an endorsement in the election
last year from the far right, anti-abortion group National Right to Life, signed the bill into law.

Democrats in the state legislature were happy that he did so. “I want to
thank (Lombardo) for following through on his commitment to ensuring that Nevada won’t participate in prosecutions of women who come here to
exercise their reproductive rights,” said Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D), the sponsor of the bill.

Although lawmakers did express gratitude for Lombardo signing the bill,
it’s possible he did so for political reasons. The state Democratic Party
last year accused Lombardo of shifting his position so often because he recognized being anti-abortion was not a popular opinion. In addition, the state legislature would have likely been able to override Lombardo’s veto anyway, rendering any action he took to block the bill a moot point.

Both houses of the state legislature must have two-thirds of their members
vote to override a veto in order to be successful. In the State Senate,
that requires 14 votes — the abortion protections bill passed in that
chamber in April with 15 votes. In the state Assembly, it requires 28
votes — 27 lawmakers in that chamber supported the bill, with a likely
28th vote also backing it, if a veto had happened, since one Democratic legislator was absent on the day the bill was voted on in May.

Reproductive rights groups have lauded lawmakers for passing the bill into
law. NARAL Pro-Choice Nevada celebrated the bill’s passage earlier this
month, explaining its importance not just to individuals seeking abortion
care in the state but throughout the country as well.

“Nevada is playing a critical role in providing abortion care in the
Southwest as our neighboring states enact bans that force people to travel
to access care,” NARAL Pro-Choice Southwest Regional Director Caroline
Mello Roberson said in a statement on May 22.

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