The New Mexico legislature on Friday passed a bill guaranteeing unlimited abortion in the state regardless of the fate of Roe v. Wade.
According to the Las Cruces Sun News, by a vote of 40-30, with six Democrats and one Republican-turned-independent joining all Republicans in opposition, the New Mexico House of Representatives approved legislation repealing a 1969 law that “criminalizes performing an abortion procedure as a fourth-degree felony, or a second-degree felony in the case of the patient’s death. It grants exceptions in cases where a pregnancy threatens the life or health of the mother, the child is likely to suffer a ‘grave physical or mental defect,’ or when the pregnancy results from rape or incest.”
The statute has not been enforced since 1973, when Roe was decided, but pro-abortion forces fear the Supreme Court could overturn Roe in the near future. The Sun News reported that Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) has made repeal of the dormant law “one of [her] major legislative goals,” an indicator of just how skewed her priorities are.
The bill passed the state senate, also on a largely party-line vote, on February 11. “Democrats sponsoring the bill refused to engage in a debate on the Senate floor,” noted the Santa Fe New Mexican.
The House, however, allowed three hours of debate. There, wrote the Sun News, “the moral question was framed [by Democrats] as a matter of autonomous choice for women of diverse ethnic groups and social classes.”
“Government has no place in these complex decisions,” declared Representative Micaela Lara Cadena (D).
“Should the protections of Roe v. Wade fall or be changed, we won’t go back to the days when I was a teenager and women had to take their chances with unsafe conditions and untrained abortion providers,” said Representative Joanne Ferrary (D). “Many lost their lives or suffered permanent injury, such as infertility.” (Even the Washington Post has found that the notion of widespread deaths of women obtaining illegal abortions prior to 1973 cannot be supported by the existing statistics; meanwhile, there are still plenty of unsafe abortion clinics operating legally today.)
Pro-life representatives, on the other hand, “argued abortions end the lives of unborn children who do not have a voice for themselves,” wrote the New Mexican.
“We’re talking about me,” said Rep. Stefani Lord, a Republican from Sandia Park who made an impassioned plea against the bill. She said her birth mother had considered an abortion while pregnant with her.
“Thank God she didn’t,” Lord said.
“You keep talking about wanting to have strong women — they have to be born first,” she said, adding she was raised not by her birth mother, but by a woman who performed abortions.
Representative Rebecca Dow (R) said she considered abortion when she got pregnant at 19 while attending college in Oklahoma. But, she added, she decided against it because she realized she “would be stopping a heartbeat.”
Pro-lifers also argued that the bill “would repeal the only conscience protections for medical workers in the state,” reported LifeNews.com. “Currently, the statute protects medical workers from discrimination if they refuse to abort an unborn baby on moral or religious grounds.”
“The radical abortion lobby seeks to force medical professionals across New Mexico to perform abortions as a matter of ‘access.’ This is not a pro-woman bill but rather, a pro-abortion lobby bill,” said Elisa Martinez, executive director of the New Mexico Alliance for Life.
If the bill became law, opponents maintained, doctors and nurses opposed to abortion might leave the state, which is already home to one of the few clinics in the country that performs unconditional late-term abortions.
“I think as a state we are making a huge mistake here today,” said Representative T. Ryan Lane (R). “We are impacting physicians who have no desire to be a part of these types of elective procedures or even medical procedures.”
Republicans attempted to offer amendments to retain the conscience protections, but the amendments were rejected.
The bill now heads to the governor, who, of course, has said she will sign it. In so doing, she will also be consigning countless future New Mexicans to death before they ever lay eyes on the Land of Enchantment.
