Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham issued a new executive order designating $10 million to a reproductive healthcare clinic in Dona Ana County.
Dona Ana County in southern New Mexico shares a boundary with the United States-Mexico border. The clinic would most likely be constructed in Las Cruces, the second largest city in the state.
“The goal here is build it and they will come,” the Democrat said during the signing ceremony on Sept. 1.
The new clinic will provide “a full spectrum of patient-centered, community-informed reproductive healthcare, including abortions.”
“New Mexicans need and deserve access to a full spectrum of reproductive healthcare, including family planning, prenatal care, labor and delivery, postpartum care and support, lactation counseling and support, abortion, and appropriate medical management of miscarriage and pregnancy loss,” states the order.
The order also tasks the New Mexico Department of Health with reviewing and evaluating “the effectiveness of actions taken or being considered by other states to increase access to abortion and decrease wait time” and with developing a “detailed plan” to use state resources to “expand access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion, in underserved areas.”
The funds come from the state’s 2023 capital allocation.
Lujan Grisham has suggested the clinic could be run in a potential partnership with medical schools and private providers. The governor indicated that “efforts to restrict access to reproductive health services from other states may lead more individuals to seek services from New Mexico healthcare providers” following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. She said her government had to “expand the availability of these services to address the demands on our system,” per Reuters.
The governor has taken several steps to protect abortion in the state since the Court’s June 24 decision. In June, Lujan Grisham signed an executive order prohibiting New Mexico’s law enforcement officers from complying with any extradition attempts from states where abortion is illegal.
“One of the largest abortion providers in Texas, Austin-based Whole Woman’s Health, also still has plans to move some of its operations to New Mexico and states in the southeastern U.S.,” reports ABC News.
Lujan Grisham is currently running for reelection. Her Republican challenger, Mark Ronchetti, publicly condemned the order and the use of taxpayer funding to expand abortion in the state.
“New Mexico was already the abortion capital of the United States, and now taxpayers are having to foot the bill for a clinic which will perform abortions up to the moment of birth for non-residents who come from other states around the country,” he said in a statement.
The former television meteorologist noted a recent Albuquerque Journal poll found that 35% of voters believe abortion should be legal.
“Using taxpayer dollars to enable and fund abortion up until the point of birth is not only out of line with New Mexican values, it is extreme,” Ronchetti said.
