LAS VEGAS (AP) — Abortion access advocates in Nevada said Monday that they have submitted nearly twice as many petition signatures as needed to qualify a measure for the November ballot that would enshrine reproductive rights in the state constitution .
Supporters collected and submitted more than 200,000 signatures, Lindsey Harmon, president of Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom, told reporters. To qualify for the ballot, supporters need 102,000 valid signatures by June 26.
“The majority of Nevadans agree that government should stay out of their personal and private decisions … about our bodies, our lives and our future,” Harmon said at a rally with about 25 supporters outside the Clark County Government Center in Las Vegas.
Election officials in Nevada’s 17 counties still need to verify the signatures, and it’s not clear how long that will take.
In Washoe County, spokeswoman Bethany Drysdale said, supporters delivered several boxes of signatures to the registrar’s office in Reno. Boxes also went to officials in Clark County, the state’s most populous and Democratic county, which includes Las Vegas.
Nevada voters approved a law in 1990 allowing abortions up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, a point considered an indicator of fetal viability. But Nevada is one of several states where advocates are pushing to strengthen access to abortion following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade picked up.
Since then, several Republican-controlled states have tightened abortion restrictions or imposed outright bans. Fourteen states currently ban abortions at all stages of pregnancy, while 25 allow abortions up to 24 weeks or later, with a few exceptions.
Harmon said efforts to collect signatures are “very costly” but declined to give an exact number. She noted that neighboring states Idaho, Arizona and Utah have stricter abortion rules than Nevada.
Most states with Democratic legislatures have laws or executive orders protecting access. Voters in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Ohio and Vermont have sided with abortion rights supporters on ballot measures. Abortion rights advocates have taken qualified ballot measures in Colorado and South Dakota, and Nevada is one of nine other states that have held signature drives.
The measure would ensure “a fundamental, individual right to abortion” while allowing Nevada to “regulate the provision of abortions based on fetal viability … except when necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant person.”
Melissa Clement, director of Nevada Right to Life, told The Associated Press her organization will continue to fight the proposed change in court and at the ballot box.
“As a woman, nothing makes me angrier than Democrats taking one of the most difficult and traumatic decisions a woman can make and using it as political fodder,” Clement said. “Women are frightened. It’s despicable.”
Collecting signatures is one of two ways Nevada is trying to get the measure on the ballot.
To amend the Nevada Constitution, voters must approve a measure twice. If the abortion amendment passes this year and is approved by voters, they would vote on it again in 2026.
In the Legislature, Nevada’s Democratic-majority lawmakers passed a 24-week abortion rights measure along party lines last year, preparing the issue for another vote when lawmakers return to their next biennial session in Carson next year Return to City. If the proposed constitutional amendment is then approved, it would be placed on the 2026 statewide ballot.
