Reproductive rights bills in Nevada Legislature tackle IVF, contraceptives, provider protections

Democrats in the Nevada State Legislature two years ago sponsored the Right to Reproductive Health Care Act, a broad bill that covered myriad reproductive health services, including pregnancy care, contraception and sterilization, and treatments for miscarriage and infertility.

Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo vetoed the bill.

For this year’s session, Democrats are taking a piecemeal approach, sponsoring bills focused on specific areas of reproductive health care rather than one omnibus bill that could again be vetoed.

Democratic Assemblymember Selena Torres-Fossett is sponsoring legislation she has dubbed the Right to Contraception Act. The bill, Assembly Bill 176, was introduced with language covering a much broader swath of reproductive health services, including abortion, but Torres-Fossett told the Assembly Health and Human Services Committee last week those provisions will be amended out so the bill focuses exclusively on protecting access to contraceptives.

Torres-Fossett said the revamped language attempts to address concerns raised by Lombardo in his veto message of the broader 2023 bill. Those changes include removing references to educational agencies to make it clear there is no intent to have school nurses providing birth control to students.

Melissa Clement, president of Nevada Right to Life, which opposes abortion rights, testified in opposition to AB176 during its hearing last week, but Clement described their opposition as “very very very soft” given Torres-Fossett’s promise to narrow it to only contraception.

“We look forward to seeing the language” of the amendment, she said before suggesting the group may support an amended version.

Senate Bill 217, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro and the rest of the Senate Democratic Caucus, establishes the right to assisted reproduction treatment, which includes in vitro fertilization (IVF) but also intrauterine insemination and the donation of eggs and embryos.

The bill, among other things, requires many private and public insurance companies to cover some assisted reproduction treatment.

“This is health care,” Cannizzaro told lawmakers last weekend during a hearing for the bill  in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. “Assisted reproductive technology is health care. IVF is healthcare. To say that some people deserve to have access and some people do not deserve to have access …  is to deny access to so many people.”

Eighty-five percent of Americans are supportive of IVF, Amanda Klein, founder of Nevada Fertility Advocates, told lawmakers, but there remains a stigma that leads to people not talking about infertility.

“It’s too painful, it’s too personal, and it’s too raw,” said Klein. “But we need to speak up. We need employers to understand how hard it is to go back to work the day after having a miscarriage. We need our family and friends to be aware of what we are going through and to be sensitive to our plight. And most importantly, we need our lawmakers to understand how big of an issue this truly is.”

Cannizzaro cited research showing that nearly 10 million women aged 15 through 49 experience impaired fertility, and among married women in this age group, 8.5% or 2.4 million are considered infertile.

According to the National Infertility Association, 22 other states mandate some form of IVF coverage.

Cannizzaro told the committee she is working with health insurance companies on the coverage requirements mandated by her bill. The companies are worried about potential costs.

Anti-abortion rights advocates also opposed the bill, primarily because one section specifies that “a fertilized egg or human embryo that exists before implantation in a human uterus is not a person for legal purposes.”

Cannizzaro defended that inclusion, saying it safeguards against issues that have arisen elsewhere — namely Alabama — where strict definitions of personhood had the effect of shutting down infertility clinics.

Protecting providers

The Nevada State Legislature is also considering two bills intended to strengthen protections for providers of reproductive health care.

Assembly Bill 411, sponsored by Democratic Assemblymember Sandra Jauregui, would allow prescriptions for drugs used for medical abortions and miscarriage management to list the name of the prescribing health care practice, rather than the name of the specific individual providing the prescription.

Providers of mifepristone, misoprostol and their generics have been targeted by groups pushing for abortion restrictions. States with strict abortion restrictions have attempted to prosecute providers in states where abortion is legally accessible. Eighteen states, including Nevada, have already enacted shield laws that attempt to protect abortion providers from prosecution in other states.

AB411 “is a necessary step to ensure that health care providers can offer essential services without fear,” Jauregui told members of the Assembly Health and Human Services Committee last week during a hearing for the bill.

An estimated 63% of abortions performed each year in the United States are medical abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Jauregui told the Assembly HHS committee she is working with national pharmaceutical groups on a possible amendment to make sure the bill’s language doesn’t have unintended effects for patients, particularly ones coming from out of state.

Assembly Bill 235, sponsored by Democratic Assemblymember Erica Roth, would allow employees and volunteers of reproductive health care facilities, as well as their spouses, domestic partners or minor children, to request a court order that keeps their personal information confidential on otherwise public records within the offices of county recorder, county assessor, county clerk, city clerk, Secretary of State, or Department of Motor Vehicles.

The bill would also extend those protections to providers of gender-affirming care.

Nevada already allows certain groups of people to request these types of court orders, including government employees, judges and politicians.

Reports of stalking and threats of harm or death directed toward abortion providers have skyrocketed since the overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022, Roth told members of the Assembly Government Affairs Committee last week. 

President Donald Trump days after taking office for his second term pardoned anti-abortion activists — “an act that sends a message that this hostility toward patients and providers is tolerated,” said Toby Frescholtz, a Reno-based medical doctor specializing in obstetrics and gynecology.

In Nevada, reproductive health providers and Planned Parenthood staff have received “countless threatening phone calls,” had anti-abortion literature physically dropped at their homes, and experienced “threatening incidents” within their health centers, according to Planned Parenthood Votes Nevada Executive Director Lindsey Harmon.

Harmon said Nevada Right to Life in an email encouraged supporters to “call in” the location of people collecting signatures for last year’s abortion rights ballot measure. The signature gatherers were “subsequently stopped by police with false reports of breaking into cars and robbery,” she added.

AB235 will not solve all of these issues, Harmon continued, but “it will at least protect providers in their homes where they should feel most safe.”

Abortion on the ballot

In 2024, Nevadans approved Question 6 and signaled their support for establishing abortion as a fundamental right in the state constitution. The measure passed with 64% of voters in support. Question 6 will appear before voters again on the 2026 general election ballot. If approved, the amendment will go into effect.

Question 6 protects abortion until “fetal viability,” which by definition would be determined by the patient’s health care practitioner. Abortions beyond that point would also be legal if needed to protect the pregnant person’s life or health.

Abortions in Nevada are currently legal up to 24 weeks after the start of the pregnancy and after 24 weeks if a physician believes the pregnant person’s life or health is at risk. Those protections were put in place via a citizen-driven referendum passed by voters in 1990.

Putting abortion rights directly into the state constitution “doubles down on the protections on statute,” Lindsey Harmon, who is also the Nevada for Reproductive Freedom President, has said. “It makes it twice as hard to repeal or amend the referendum.”

In a hearing for the Right to Contraception Act, Harmon reminded lawmakers that Nevada for Reproductive Freedom originally sought a proposal to enshrine reproductive rights more broadly into the state constitution, but they narrowed their ballot measure to abortion rights when facing legal delays.

“That is the impetus of a lot of this work that we’re doing,” Harmon testified. “We had to narrow that constitutional amendment, so we’re here now doing some of this work legislatively.”