Untangling the Nevada Personhood Initiative

The ACLU of Nevada and other advocates for reproductive freedom are fighting an initiative that could potentially ban a range of reproductive health care services in Nevada. The initiative, backed by the organization Personhood Nevada, would add a short, fourteen-word amendment to the Nevada Constitution: “In the great state of Nevada, the term ‘person’ applies to every human being.”

Though brief, this initiative is so vague that it is impossible to determine its meaning - let alone the intended or possible consequences - from the text alone. In fact, on one reading, the initiative has no meaning because “person” and “human being” have similar, if not identical, common definitions.

Another reading, pushed by proponents of the initiative, drastically changes Nevada’s laws by redefining the term “person” to include a fertilized egg and all subsequent stages of prenatal development. Their intent is to redefine a fertilized egg in Nevada’s Constitution and laws as a person that is afforded full constitutional rights, including due process protections and the right to “life, liberty, and property.”

Because the text of the initiative is so vague and the description of effect so unclear, the Personhood Initiative could affect numerous provisions of the Nevada Constitution and literally thousands of laws. This wide breadth of this new definition would invite lawyers and the courts to reinterpret every Nevada law and regulation that contains the word “person,” all at the expense of Nevada taxpayers.

If passed, this initiative could potentially ban all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest, and commonly used forms of birth control. In addition, it could interfere with doctors’ ability to treat life-threatening pregnancies, miscarriages, and infertility, and it could ban some stem cell research and other life-saving therapies and cures.

The 200 word description of effect put forward by the proponents of the initiative is likewise vague, and does not mention abortion, let alone birth control or fertility. It does, however, define a human being as anyone “possessing a human genome” and claims to protect all life “without discrimination as to age, health, reproduction method, function, physical or mental capacity, or cognitive ability.”

Such “personhood” amendments have been introduced in 36 other states as part of the Personhood Movement, whose goal is to undercut a women’s constitutional right to safe and legal abortions. The right of women in Nevada to access reproductive health care is protected both by the United States Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade as well as an earlier initiative passed by Nevada voters in 1990.