Abortion in New Mexico is legal. 51% of adults said in a poll by the Pew Research Center that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. The number of abortion clinics in New Mexico has decline over the years, with 26 in 1982, twenty in 1992 and eleven in 2014. There were 4,500 legal abortions in 2014.
Terminology
The abortion debate most commonly relates to the "induced abortion" of an embryo or fetus at some point in a pregnancy, which is also how the term is used in a legal sense. Some also use the term "elective abortion", which is used in relation to a claim to an unrestricted right of a woman to an abortion, whether or not she chooses to have one. The term elective abortion or voluntary abortion describes the interruption of pregnancy before viability at the request of the woman, but not for medical reasons. Anti-abortion advocates tend to use terms such as "unborn baby", "unborn child", or "pre-born child", and see the medical terms "embryo", "zygote", and "fetus" as dehumanizing. Both "pro-choice" and "pro-life" are examples of terms labeled as political framing: they are terms which purposely try to define their philosophies in the best possible light, while by definition attempting to describe their opposition in the worst possible light. "Pro-choice" implies that the alternative viewpoint is "anti-choice", while "pro-life" implies the alternative viewpoint is "pro-death" or "anti-life". The Associated Press encourages journalists to use the terms "abortion rights" and "anti-abortion".
Context
Free birth control correlates to teenage girls having a fewer pregnancies and fewer abortions. A 2014 New EnglandJournal of Medicine study found such a link. At the same time, a 2011 study by Center for Reproductive Rights and Ibis Reproductive Health also found that states with more abortion restrictions have higher rates of maternal death, higher rates of uninsured pregnant women, higher rates of infant and child deaths, higher rates of teen drug and alcohol abuse, and lower rates of cancer screening. According to a 2017 report from the Center for Reproductive Rights and Ibis Reproductive Health, states that tried to pass additional constraints on a women's ability to access legal abortions had fewer policies supporting women's health, maternal health and children's health. These states also tended to resist expanding Medicaid, family leave, medical leave, and sex education in public schools. According to Megan Donovan, a senior policy manager at the Guttmacher Institute, states have legislation seeking to protect a woman's right to access abortion services have the lowest rates of infant mortality in the United States. Poor women in the United States had problems paying for menstrual pads and tampons in 2018 and 2019. Almost two-third of American women could not pay for them. These were not available through the federal Women, Infants, and Children Program. Lack of menstrual supplies has an economic impact on poor women. A study in St. Louis found that 36% had to miss days of work because they lacked adequate menstrual hygiene supplies during their period. This was on top of the fact that many had other menstrual issues including bleeding, cramps and other menstrual induced health issues. This state was one of a majority that taxed essential hygiene products like tampons and menstrual pads as of November 2018.
History
Legislative history
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, New Mexico, North Carolina and Oregon made reforms to their abortion laws, with most of these states providing more detailed medical guidance on when therapeutic abortions could be performed. In 1969, the Legislature passed a law that made it a felony for someone to provide a woman with an abortion unless it was needed to save a woman's life, or because her pregnancy was a result of rape or incest. The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in 1973's Roe v. Wade barred states from regulating abortion in the first trimester; consequently, New Mexico's 1969 abortion law became unenforceable. In March 2019, the Legislature considered a bill that would have repealed the 1969 law. While the New Mexico House of Representatives passed the repeal bill, it was defeated in the State Senate by a vote of 24–18. In 2017, Washington State, New Mexico, Illinois, Alaska, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey allowed qualified non-physicians to prescribe drugs for medical abortions only. New Mexico had few abortion restrictions in comparison to other states as of May 1, 2018. There are no waiting periods, no required parental consent, and no inability to use state funding for an abortion.
Clinic history
Between 1982 and 1992, the number of abortion clinics in the state decreased by six, going from 26 in 1982 to twenty in 1992. In 2014, there were eleven facilities which provided abortions of which nine were abortion clinics. In 2014, 91% of the counties in the state did not have an abortion clinic. That year, 48% of women in the state aged 15 – 44 lived in a county without an abortion clinic. In March 2016, there were 6 Planned Parenthood clinics in the state. In 2017, Planned Parenthood closed three clinics in the state. This was done around their plans to try to consolidate reproductive services they offered in the New Mexico. Later that year, there were three total Planned Parenthood clinics in the state. At the time, the population was 456,213 for women aged 15 – 49 of which two offered abortion services.
Statistics
In the period between 1972 and 1974, there were zero recorded illegal abortion deaths in the state. In 1990, 181,000 women in the state faced the risk of an unintended pregnancy. Between 2011 and 2014, there was a 10% decline in the number of abortions performed in the state. In 2013, among white women aged 15–19, there were abortions 150, 20 abortions for black women aged 15–19, 370 abortions for Hispanic women aged 15–19, and 70 abortions for women of all other races. In 2014, 51% of adults said in a poll by the Pew Research Center that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. In 2017, the state had an infant mortality rate of 5.9 deaths per 1,000 live births.
Abortion financing
Seventeen states including New Mexico used their own funds to cover all or most "medically necessary" abortions sought by low-income women under Medicaid, thirteenof which are required by State court orders to do so. In 2010, the state had 1,270 publicly funded abortions, of which were 0 federally funded and 1,270 were state funded. Public funding was still available in May 2018.
Women from the state participated in marches supporting abortion rights as part of a #StoptheBans movement in May 2019.
Views
Executive Director Kirsten Schaffer said of Georgia and other states similar restrictive abortion bans passed in early 2019, “A woman’s right to make choices about her own body is fundamental to her personal and professional well-being. We support people who make the choice not to take their production to Georgia or take a job in Georgia because of the draconian anti-choice law. To that end, we’ve compiled a list of pro-choice states that offer meaningful tax rebates and production incentives, and encourage everyone to explore these alternatives: California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Washington.”
Anti-abortion views and activities
Violence
On December 6, 2007, Chad Altman and Sergio Baca were arrested for the arson of Dr. Curtis Boyd's clinic in Albuquerque. Baca's girlfriend had scheduled an appointment for an abortion at the clinic.
