A coalition of reproductive rights groups in Nevada is formally launching an effort Saturday to place an amendment on the November ballot that would enshrine abortion rights in the battleground state’s constitution.
But its kickoff event won’t be exclusively geared toward abortion rights.
Rather, organizers at Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom, the group leading the ballot effort, will also look to drive enthusiasm by drawing attention to the recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling that found embryos created through in vitro fertilization are considered children.
The decision has meant that people could theoretically be sued for destroying an embryo, leading to fear that conservative lawmakers and judges who first came after abortion rights are now coming after fertility treatments.
“The ruling out of Alabama is a reminder of just how urgent this issue is. We knew that the overturning of Roe v. Wade opened the door not just to limits on abortion but every part of reproductive health care including IVF, birth control, and so much more,” Tova Yampolsky, the campaign manager for Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom, said in a statement to NBC News.
“Every time other states take hostile action towards any aspect of reproductive rights, it’s an opportunity to engage people on why making protections more robust in Nevada is important” she added.
Nevada is now the latest state where abortion-rights groups have launched signature-collecting efforts to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. In the 20 months since that ruling, abortion-rights advocates have won every race in which the issue has appeared directly on the ballot.
But organizers for similar efforts in other states told NBC News that they too will attempt to utilize anger over the Alabama ruling to build support for their ballot initiatives — both in signature-collecting efforts to qualify the measure for the ballot, and to get it passed.
That includes the campaign in South Dakota, led by a group called Dakotans for Health, seeking to put a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot next fall that would make abortion legal in all situations in the first trimester of a pregnancy.
“This is madness. It will come to South Dakota the minute extremist advocates file suit here because South Dakota’s Legislature has enacted the same illogical fiction that a person is created at the instant of fertilization, and therefore a frozen embryo is a person, that opened the door to this insanity in Alabama,” Rick Weiland, the group’s co-founder, said in a statement to NBC News.
“The only way to save IVF and restore reproductive rights in South Dakota is to reinstate Roe v. Wade by writing it into the South Dakota Constitution, which is what our citizen-initiated amendment does,” Weiland added.
The proposal in South Dakota would allow "regulation" by the state of abortion care in the second trimester of pregnancy but such regulation "must be reasonably related to the physical health of the pregnant woman."
In the third trimester, the amendment would allow "regulation or prohibition" by the state of of abortion care, except in cases when a physician has determined that the care would be necessary to "preserve the life or health" of the mother.
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If passed, the amendment would effectively undo the state’s near-total ban on abortion, which snapped back into effect after Roe was struck down. The law, which abortion advocates say is among the harshest in the U.S., prohibits all abortions except when necessary to save the mother’s life. To place the measure, Dakotans for Health first must collect 35,000 signatures from registered voters before May 7.
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Meanwhile, in Nevada, abortion rights supporters will officially begin collecting signatures throughout Las Vegas on Saturday morning after they selected one proposed 2024 ballot measure from two possible options.
In attendance at the kickoff event in North Las Vegas will be Nevada state Senate Democratic Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, Planned Parenthood Action Fund President CEO Alexis McGill Johnson and Illinois’ Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, whose Think Big America nonprofit has helped fund reproductive rights causes and similar ballot measures in states across the United States.
To advance the measure to the November ballot in Nevada, the group must collect the valid signatures of approximately 103,000 registered voters in the state by June 26.
In Nevada, abortion is already legal up until the 24th week of pregnancy. But fearing that such protections could be undone in future Republican administrations in the state, reproductive rights advocates sought to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would enshrine similar language — protecting abortion rights up until fetal viability — to make it close to impossible for lawmakers to ever terminate the protections.
Specifically, the proposed amendment would establish that “all individuals” have “a fundamental right to abortion performed or administered by a qualified health care practitioner until fetal viability” without “interference from the state or its political subdivisions.”
The language includes an exception after that time period when abortion care is “needed to protect the life or health of the pregnant patient.”
The proposed measure defines “fetal viability” as “the point in pregnancy when, in the professional judgment of the patient’s treating health care practitioner, there is a significant likelihood of the fetus’ sustained survival outside the uterus without the application of extraordinary medical measures.”
The group had originally filed two proposals with state officials. Conservative opponents filed legal challenges against both. The challenges to the measure the group is moving forward with were resolved last month. The Nevada Supreme Court is still reviewing the group’s other, more sweeping, proposal.
Even if the proposed measure passes in November, it would have to, under Nevada law, pass again in 2026 before the constitution is formally amended.
But having an abortion question on the ballot in Nevada — a crucial swing state — could help boost Democratic turnout in the races for president and U.S. Senate by tapping into the enthusiasm around the issue.
