A closer look at abortion rights in New Mexico

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Whereas the Supreme Court docket’s ultimate choice on abortion doesn’t make it unlawful nationwide, the problem has now been thrown again to the states as to if abortions are restricted or banned.

In New Mexico, abortion will stay authorized due to motion taken by the state’s Legislature. Nonetheless, that’s not the case for many of the neighboring states as Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona and Utah all have legal guidelines on the books that ban abortion.

New Mexico’s abortion regulation was placed on the books in 1969. It banned abortions besides in circumstances of rape, incest, or if it was vital to save lots of a girl’s life. New Mexico’s regulation turned unenforceable following the Supreme Court docket choice in Roe v. Wade in 1973. It sat on the books, dormant, till February 2021.

That’s when Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a invoice that struck that previous regulation from the books.

“That is about girls who deserve the fitting, significantly when there are untenable circumstances, to have a relationship with their supplier and management over their very own our bodies and we all know when that happens, frankly, we’re saving lives,” stated Lujan Grisham.

With the regulation off the books, abortion shall be authorized in New Mexico – whilst Roe v. Wade is struck down.

In neighboring Colorado, they took it even a step additional than New Mexico.

Gov. Jared Polis lately signed the Reproductive Well being Fairness Act into regulation. The laws makes it a proper for individuals to make reproductive well being care selections with out authorities interference.

New Mexico is predicted to see an inflow of sufferers searching for abortions.

Final October, in a court docket choice on a authorized problem to the Texas regulation, a decide wrote that following the passage of Texas regulation, New Mexico clinics turned overwhelmed. The decide additionally wrote that almost a 3rd of all abortions at New Mexico well being facilities on the time had been for Texas sufferers.