Last month marked what would have been the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, but as we all know, federal protections for abortion are gone at least for the foreseeable future. Now, state governments and the patients who live in them are left to navigate a complicated legal landscape and an even more complicated path to accessing abortion care. 

I could speak at length about how losing a protected constitutional right is an affront to our very democratic principles and freedom. But that’s not the only thing that keeps me up at night. 

It’s also the fact that the devastating loss of our reproductive health care rights is the result of a small, vocal minority who seek to criminalize providers and prevent anyone who can become pregnant from seeking basic health care. 

The right to an abortion is more popular than ever among not just Americans, but also Nevadans — and no amount of fear-mongering, misinformation, and disingenuous crying from anti-abortion activists will change that. But that doesn’t mean they won’t try. 

In fact, at the 2022 Basque Fry, a fundraising event tied heavily with extreme GOP candidates, the anti-abortion group Nevada Right to Life told attendees that they would pursue avenues to limit abortion access, including taking it to the ballot. 

We know how serious those threats are. If we, the vast majority of people who believe people should have reproductive freedom, don’t step up now, we are only helping them in their efforts to limit — and eventually eliminate — abortion care. 

Millions of people in this country who live in the 18 states that have enacted abortion bans and restrictions since Roe fell are already experiencing this heartbreaking reality. If we as Nevadans truly believe the government has absolutely no place telling us or anyone else what they can do with their body, then now would be a hell of a time for us to be complacent. 

Instead, to protect and improve abortion care in Nevada, we have to double down this legislative session. 

The 2022 midterms were by and large decided by whether or not a candidate stood by reproductive freedom and abortion rights. While there was, of course, a faction of extreme Trump-adjacent Republicans who embraced cruel abortion bans, some of our more moderate Republican candidates — who are now elected officials — hid behind the state’s statutory protections during the election, refusing to truly take a stand on the issue. Instead, they passed it on to voters and danced around their own anti-abortion beliefs. 

But here’s the thing: Now it’s time to legislate, and those statutory protections are not near ironclad enough for true comfort. 

For instance, they say nothing about protections for patients traveling into Nevada to seek abortion care or the health providers giving that care because in 1990 when the law was passed, there was no world in which patients would need to travel hundreds of miles for care only to face potential criminalization upon their return home. 

The game has changed. Sticking our heads in the sand and relying on outdated, 30 year-old protections will not be enough. We need leaders who are willing to think boldly and take tangible steps toward making sure the right to an abortion is unassailable in Nevada. Because if we don’t do it now, we run the risk of losing everything we’ve fought so hard for. 

Lindsey Harmon is the executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes Nevada, an organization that advocates and educates on behalf of issues of abortion rights and sexual and reproductive health care in Nevada.