Nevada GOP Senate candidate calls opponent out of touch for supporting reproductive rights

Nevada Republican Senate hopeful Sam Brown dodged questions last week about whether he’d back a federal abortion ban and criticized Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen for being “out of touch” with Nevadans and their values. His reason: She backed a federal bill to codify the reproductive rights once protected under Roe v. Wade.

In an interview with Las Vegas television station KSNV published on July 13, reporter Brett Forrest asked Brown about his position on abortion access.

Brown first noted his opposition to abortion rights. “I would love to see fewer abortions. I am pro-life. And you know, with exceptions for those tragic cases in which there is rape, incest, or a threat to the life of the mother, but I think we can do better in helping to sort of create a pathway for adoption.”

He then attacked Rosen for her support for the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that would have codified the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade that guaranteed reproductive rights for nearly 50 years prior to its 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization:

But Jacky Rosen is out of touch with us. Our values. She’s actually voted to have federal law supersede our law. She’s extreme on this issue. The vast majority of Nevadans don’t support what she supports, which is federal funding of abortion, the allowance of minors to have abortion without parental notification or consent, and late term abortion. We’re talking about abortion up to 7, 8, 9 months. This is out of step with our values. And she wants to push that federal law and supersede our state law.

Asked whether he would vote for a federal abortion ban, Brown dodged the question, answering: “I don’t see that there’s any pathway to the federal law or the state law changing. And I certainly can’t sort of hypothesize what that would look like, but we are where we are. I would love to see fewer abortions.”

Brown has consistently opposed abortion rights.

During his unsuccessful 2014 campaign for the Texas Legislature, Brown said: “Abortion is not an issue of choice. It is an issue of life and I am proudly pro-life.”

Last year, during his unsuccessful campaign for Nevada’s other Senate seat, he said on his campaign issues page, “Every life is precious, and it is in our American interest that we protect the lives of unborn babies just as we would protect the life of any other American.”

Brown said he believes abortion should be legal only in cases of “risk of life to the mother” in response to a 2022 “iVoterGuide” survey by the American Family Association, an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as a right-wing hate group.

Brown’s claim that Rosen supports unlimited abortions has been widely debunked. The 2022 bill that would have guaranteed federal reproductive rights protections, for which Rosen voted, expressly allowed restrictions on abortions “after fetal viability,” so long as they included exceptions for the very rare cases where, “in the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care provider, continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk to the pregnant patient’s life or health.”

Contrary to Brown’s claims, Rosen’s support of abortion rights is very much in line with most Nevadans’ values.

In 1990, 63.5% of the state’s voters approved a ballot referendum guaranteeing abortion rights up to 24 weeks’ gestation.

In November 2022, reproductive rights supporter Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) narrowly won reelection against Republican former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who opposes abortion rights. Exit polling showed that abortion rights were a major factor in her victory.

An April 2023 poll conducted by the Nevada Independent and Noble Predictive Insights found that 62% of Nevada voters support “adding the right for a woman to obtain an abortion to the Nevada State Constitution,” while 18% oppose doing so.

Brown will face other Republicans, including 2022 Republican secretary of state nominee Jim Marchant, in the 2024 GOP Senate primary. Marchant also strongly opposes reproductive rights.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.