October 13, 2026:

Nevada became a hub for abortion care after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022—but now that trend is reversing. We asked experts why.

Abortion is on the ballot in Nevada—again. For the second time in two years, Nevadans will vote on a measure that would protect the right to abortion. 

If passed, the ballot initiative would constitutionally enshrine Nevada’s current law, which allows abortion for any reason up to 24 weeks into pregnancy. The state allows abortion after 24 weeks to save the life or health of the pregnant person. Nevada requires constitutional amendments to be approved in two consecutive general elections. Question 6, the “Right to Abortion Initiative,” cleared the first round of voting in 2024. 

In the wake of the landmark Supreme Court decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ended nearly 50 years of federally protected abortion access, some states quickly imposed bans. Others rushed to protect abortion care, and patients travelled long distances to reach them.

As neighboring states like Utah and Idaho imposed strict bans, people began traveling to Nevada for care. In 2023, 18 percent of abortions in Nevada were obtained by out-of-state patients, up from 5 percent in 2020, according to the data from the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual and reproductive health research and policy organization. 

Now, this trend is reversing—a change experts attribute to liberalized abortion laws in nearby states and the national rise of telehealth abortion care. 

Nevada’s patient population changes

Relatively few people came to Nevada from out of state for abortion care in 2025—just 5 percent, according to Guttmacher’s latest data. But this decline does not mean interstate abortion travel has returned to pre-Dobbs levels.

A local abortion-support organization that helps out of state patients, the Las Vegas-based Wild West Access Fund, reported a similar decrease. 

Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, a public health researcher at the University of California-San Francisco, tied the downward trend of patients traveling to Nevada to the increasing number of people now getting abortion through telehealth. 

In the first six months of 2025, 44 percent of abortions in Nevada were provided via telehealth, with mailed medications. Typically, that means a combination of the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol. 

“It has really opened up doors for people,” Upadhyay told Rewire News Group. “People in rural areas are more likely to benefit from it, because they don’t have to travel as much.” 

Telehealth has not eliminated the need for interstate travel or in-person care. Medication abortions are most effective early in pregnancy; after 13 weeks or so, patients may need a procedural abortion. 

Others may be reluctant to use telehealth because of the legal uncertainty in their home state.  

“There’s a lot of fear of criminalization,” said Upadhyay, who is also on the faculty at UCSF’s Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health program. 

Isaac Maddow-Zimet, a data scientist at Guttmacher, also credited telehealth abortion care with the drop in Nevada’s out-of-state patient population. But he pointed out that growing abortion restrictions in other states are forcing many patients who do travel for care to go further for abortion care. This, relatedly, is increasing their costs. 

This was true even when Roe was in place, Maddow-Zimmet said. Anti-abortion states imposed restrictions like forced waiting periods and gestational limits, and targeted providers with onerous requirements that made it nearly impossible for them to legally provide abortion care. 

Dobbs has “supercharged” that trend, Maddow-Zimet said.

He used Florida as an example. The state enacted a six-week abortion ban in May 2024, and telehealth abortion was also banned. This drove more Florida residents to travel out of state for abortion care, from around 2,800 people in 2023 to more than 10,000 in 2025, Maddow-Zimet said. 

Many turned to North Carolina. But the state’s 12-week ban and its 72-hour waiting period pushed patients further—often up to Virginia, which has not imposed any abortion restrictions since Dobbs. Virginia saw a 12-fold increase in the number of Floridians who travelled to the state for care between 2023 and 2025, according to Guttmacher.

A kind of converse ripple effect has played out across the Southwest. As some southwestern states expanded abortion access after Dobbs, regional destinations like Nevada saw a drop in out-of-state patient numbers. 

For example, Maddow-Zimet said that in 2023, around 1,200 Arizonans traveled to Nevada for abortion care. In 2024, Arizona voters made abortion access a fundamental right. And by 2025, the number of Arizonans leaving the state for abortion care in Nevada dropped to around 200.

But people in other states are still travelling, including to Nevada. And experts say those who are must frequently travel further than before Dobbs and incur larger costs.  

How abortion funds help

Patients hoping to reach a clinic in Nevada face daunting logistical and financial barriers like arranging transportation, paying for gas or flights, taking unpaid leave, sorting out child care, booking accommodations, and navigating unfamiliar health-care systems. 

Once patients in the Southwest decide to seek care, organizations like the Wild West Access Fund can help them get it. People who need financial and logistic support complete an online intake form describing what kind of support they need, then volunteers use the information to coordinate funding by evaluating the application and determining how much financial assistance can be provided.

Macy Haverda, the organization’s executive director, said the biggest challenge traveling patients experience is cost. 

“First and foremost, without a doubt, it’s money.” Haverda said. “Child care could be solved by more money. Lost wages could be solved by more money. Transportation can be solved by more money.”

In 2024, Nevada’s Medicaid program was court-ordered to expand its coverage to include abortion services. According to Upadhyay, this change reduced one of financial barriers to abortion care for low-income Nevada residents insured by the program.

Requiring Medicaid coverage for abortions is “the single best thing a state can do for abortion access,” she said.

“Costs have always been the greatest barrier to abortion care,” she added.

But for patients traveling to Nevada from other states, Medicaid coverage doesn’t solve the cost of accessing care. Haverda said traveling patients have many other expenses to cover, and sometimes—even in combination with other funding sources—the organization isn’t “able to cover them fully because of the sheer number of people that are applying.”

More than 90 percent of the Wild West fund’s clients, including both Nevada residents and out-of-state patients, report annual income of $50,000 and lower, according to a recent survey conducted by the fund. As of August 2026, according to the organization’s website, it had already spent around $159,722 on helping patients pay for abortion care while also coordinating funding to help cover the costs of travel. 

Haverda said that the organization has about $8,000 available weekly to allocate towards patients’ abortion costs. But demand often outpaces what that budget can fully cover.

Abortion funds nationwide are stretched thin. According to the National Network of Abortion Funds, a coalition of abortion funds that provides support to independent member funds, funding requests doubled after Dobbs, from 117,000 in 2022 to around 234,000 in 2025.

The Wild West Access Fund also provides practical support by connecting callers to resources, like help navigating the logistics of care.

The “logistics of the health-care system for this one specific service are impossible for people to handle without having serious knowledge of laws, restrictions, where they can go,” Haverda said. 

Limayli Huguet, helpline counsel at the nonprofit legal services organization If/When/How, said legal worries add to the list of hurdles that abortion patients must clear when traveling out-of-state for care. 

“The states that are passing these laws know that. These are meant to have a chilling effect and make people afraid of either leaving the state to access abortion or supporting a loved one who is going to access abortion,” Huguet told RNG. 

Huguet said abortion restrictions can create fear that traveling to another state for an abortion and returning home afterward could expose them to criminal penalities—even if abortion was legal in the state where it was provided.

They needn’t be, Huguet said.

“If you are leaving one state because you’re not able to access care legally, and you’re going to another state and you are accessing care legally, then there is no basis for either state to pursue criminal or legal consequences against you,” she said, “because you’re not doing anything wrong, and you’re not breaking any laws.” 

Nevada providers feel the crunch

Dr. Laura Dalton works at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, in San Jose, California, and oversees the organization’s Nevada clinics. She remembers a time before Nevada had protected reproductive rights, when its own laws spurred fear in patients and logistical headaches for abortion workers.

She recalled one patient, a young adult, who could not safely tell her parents about seeking an abortion. That was in the brief, ten-month period in 2025 and 2026, when Nevada briefly had a parental notification requirement for minors.

After being referred to Planned Parenthood, staff connected her with pro bono legal assistance through the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which helped her get a judicial bypass and obtain abortion care without telling her parents.

Despite the decrease in out-of-state patients traveling to Nevada, Dalton said, Planned Parenthood’s Las Vegas clinic is seeing demand exceed its capacity. The reason is simple: The clinic is too small.

So, until it can find a larger space and hire a full-time physician to provide the full spectrum of reproductive health-care, it only offers medication abortion. Patients who need procedural abortions up to 24 weeks are referred to the organization’s Reno clinic.

Dalton identified one plus side to the post-Dobbs abortion landscape. She said that, in her assessment, more health-care providers are seeking training in abortion care since Dobbs. She recalled one family physician who had supported abortion rights but never offered the service reaching out to her about abortion care training.

This observation reflects a broader national shift. A 2024 survey found that post-Dobbs, 71 percent of OB-GYN residency applicants considered abortion training important when ranking programs. Before Dobbs, only 66 percent had.

Dalton is grateful that providers, communities, and grassroots organizations are stepping up to help patients navigate similar barriers in Nevada and beyond.

But, she said, they shouldn’t have to.   

“Abortion should be treated as what it is, which is health care,” Dalton said. “It should be a covered service in all communities, and should be accessible in all communities. And it shouldn’t have to rely on these support networks that have questionable sustainability.” 

Question 6 on the ballot 

As Nevadans prepare for a second vote on Question 6, advocates like Denise Lopez, director of Nevada campaigns for advocacy group Reproductive Freedom for All, emphasized that strengthening legal protections for abortion remains important—both for patients who live in state and those who do not.  

“We want to make sure that anyone seeking care  is able to receive that care here,” in Nevada, she told RNG. 

If the measure fails, abortion would still remain legal in Nevada. But the protections will not have constitutional backing. If an anti-abortion majority wins power in the state, the law could change.

Enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution, Lopez said, ensures that “no matter who’s in office … we have that protection at the highest level.”

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