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Following the Supreme Court’s devastating blow to Americans’ fundamental reproductive rights, Mississippi’s only abortion clinic is moving to Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Last Friday, Las Cruces’ Congresswoman, Republican Yvette Herrell, cheered the attack on women’s rights, just as she celebrated Texas draconian abortion ban last year, saying abortion belongs in “the ash heap of history.”
As the Texas Tribune writes, the dangerous bans Herrell supports – without exceptions for rape, incest or life of the mother – threaten abortion access in red states and blue states alike, as millions of women are now forced to travel across state lines to receive reproductive care – stretching capacity for abortion clinics still allowed to operate.
If Republicans retake Congress this November, the consequences for women grow more dire still. Herrell and her fellow House Republicans are pushing a nationwide abortion ban. Herrell even supports legislation to jail doctors who perform abortions.
DCCC spokesperson Maddy Mundy:
“Yvette Herrell’s dangerous, anti-abortion stances put the lives of New Mexicans and women across this country in peril. If she and her radical Republicans retake the majority, they will take their anti-choice attacks even further and ban abortion nationwide.”
Read more about the state of abortion access in New Mexico below:
The Texas Tribune: After losing battle to preserve Roe v. Wade, Mississippi’s last abortion clinic is moving to New Mexico
By Jolie McCullough
June 29, 2022
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Shannon Brewer has lived in Mississippi her entire life, but when she realized the U.S. Supreme Court was about to upend her life’s work, she didn’t think twice about trading her state’s lush wetlands for a ragged mountain range.
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Brewer’s team picked Las Cruces, about 40 miles north of El Paso, because of its proximity to Texas and its lack of abortion care.
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More than half of the states in the country already have or are likely to outlaw abortion after the high court’s ruling, according to the Guttmacher Institute. In the immediate aftermath, many poor people in anti-abortion states like Texas are unable to safely access procedures or medication. Those who can are traveling across the country and flooding the few clinics in states where abortion is still legal.
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After Texas’ abortion ban at about six weeks into pregnancy went into effect in September, Brewer said existing clinics in places like New Mexico, Colorado, Louisiana and hers in Mississippi were inundated with Texas patients.
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New Mexico — set to become a safe haven for abortion for Texas and much of the south — is also a poor, largely rural state that often fails to adequately provide reproductive health care to its own residents, including abortions and things like cancer screenings.
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The state has only three surgical abortion clinics, all in Albuquerque, the most populous city in the state’s northern half. Doña Ana County, home to Las Cruces in the south, has two reproductive health clinics, but they only provide abortion medication for early stage pregnancies. One clinic advertises on its website that it’s only one mile from El Paso.
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