SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The New Mexico governor signed into law an abortion rights bill Thursday that strikes down local ordinances aimed at restricting access to abortion procedures and medications.
Reproductive health clinics in New Mexico provide abortion procedures to patients from other states where there are strict prohibitions on termination of pregnancy, such as Texas.
The new law also seeks to guarantee access to medical care for gender dysphoria, that is, the feeling of discomfort that people whose gender identity differs from the sex assigned at birth can feel.
New Mexico has one of the most liberal abortion access laws in the country, but two counties and three cities in the eastern part of the state recently passed restrictions that reflect entrenched opposition to the procedure.
The bill signed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham overturns those local ordinances.
A companion bill moving through the New Mexico legislature will protect abortion providers as well as patients from meddling, prosecution and extradition attempts from other states.
The Democratic-majority state Legislature passed a measure in 2021 to strike down a dormant 1969 law that banned abortions in most cases, to ensure access to termination of pregnancy after the federal Supreme Court struck down last year the resolution Roe v. Wade.
The anti-abortion ordinances, passed in recent months by authorities in the cities of Hobbs, Clovis and Eunice, as well as Lea and Roosevelt counties, cite an obscure federal anti-obscenity law that prohibits sending drugs or other materials that can be used for abortion of pregnancy.
On the other hand, the secretary of Justice of the state, the Democrat Raúl Torrez, requested the intervention of the state Supreme Court to intervene against the local anti-abortion decrees that, he assures, violate the state constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process.
Democratic governors in 20 states launched a network this year to strengthen abortion access in the wake of the federal Supreme Court’s decision to deny a woman’s constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.
The decision turns regulatory authority over the proceedings to state governments.
Many states have also enacted and contemplated restrictions or outright bans on medical treatment for transgender people. In this regard, conservative federal legislators said they were concerned that young people would regret it after undergoing a treatment that irreversibly alters their bodies.
