New Mexico metropolis passes ordinance to dam abortion clinics from working By Reuters

By Brad Brooks

HOBBS, New Mexico (Reuters) – A New Mexico city close to the Texas border on Monday unanimously handed an ordinance designed to ban abortions, regardless of the process being authorized within the state.     The so-called “sanctuary metropolis for the unborn” ordinance blocks abortion clinics from working and its passage by the Hobbs metropolis fee marks a primary for a city in a state managed by the Democratic Occasion, in accordance with anti-abortion advocates.

Hobbs doesn’t have an abortion clinic, however could possibly be a spot for such a clinic that would serve individuals from Republican-controlled Texas, to the east. Entire Girl’s Well being, one of many largest suppliers of abortions in the US, has advised Reuters it was involved in opening a clinic in Hobbs or close by Clovis.

Texas was one of many first states to impose a near-total ban on abortion and suppliers might resist life in jail there.    

The all-male Hobbs metropolis fee voted 7-0 to approve the ordinance after listening to from a number of audio system on each side of the problem. The gang of about 150 individuals packed into the fee chambers was overwhelmingly anti-abortion and erupted into shouting, hugging and crying in celebration when the ordinance was accepted.

“That is simply heaven! We’re main the best way and possibly, finally, we are able to flip this state round,” mentioned Jan Auld, vice-president of the Proper to Life group of Lea County, which incorporates Hobbs, moments after the vote. “God is in management, and he confirmed up tonight.”

New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham advised Reuters in a written assertion that the ordinance had been “authored by out-of-state extremists” and that it’s “a transparent affront to the rights and private autonomy of each girl in Hobbs and southeastern New Mexico, and we won’t stand for it.”

“Reproductive well being care is authorized and guarded in each nook of our state,” Grisham wrote. “Suppliers delivering well being care have each proper to ascertain a observe, and all girls have the precise to entry treatment abortion providers, irrespective of the place in New Mexico they name house.”    One other New Mexico metropolis, Clovis, final week indefinitely postponed the same ordinance, with metropolis commissioners there saying they felt it was too rushed.

An East Texas anti-abortion group making an attempt to get a foothold in New Mexico and pastors in Clovis mentioned the Clovis politicians confronted political stress from state-level Republicans who feared a backlash forward of Tuesday’s midterm elections.

Each Clovis and Hobbs are situated in conservative japanese New Mexico. Clovis additionally doesn’t at the moment have an abortion clinic. Each are thought-about take a look at instances for the way anti-abortion activists will function in “blue,” or Democratic-controlled, states the place abortion stays authorized after the Supreme Courtroom in June struck down federal abortion protections in Roe v. Wade.    Mark Lee Dickson, the top of the Proper to Lifetime of East Texas and the architect of the “sanctuary metropolis” motion that has seen over 50 cities undertake anti-abortion measures in Texas and different conservative states, hopes to duplicate the success elsewhere in New Mexico and in different blue Democratic states the place abortion remained authorized.

“There are individuals all around the United States which can be eager to see their cities take steps to guard the well being and welfare of unborn kids, and I consider that this may be the trail ahead for each single state in America,” Dickson mentioned after the vote.     Whereas Entire Girl’s Well being has been involved in opening a clinic in Hobbs to serve girls coming from Texas into New Mexico searching for the process, it now says the passage of the ordinance is now giving the supplier pause about whether or not to take action.