New Mexico Bill ‘Compels’ Medical Providers to Perform Abortions

A bill that would force doctors and nurses in New Mexico to perform abortions has passed the state House and is now at the Democrat-controlled state Senate.

House Bill 51 is similar to New York’s Reproductive Health Act, signed into law by Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and Virginia’s Repeal Act,  introduced by Democrat Delegate Kathy Tran and endorsed by Democrat Gov. Ralph Northam. Both pieces of legislation endeavored to remove all restrictions to abortion.

“[The bill] compels doctors, nurses, hospitals to perform abortion,” said Republican state Rep. Rod Montoya, reported the Daily Caller. “We believe this bill if it passes will be challenged.”

The legislation eliminates a conscience clause that protects the right of doctors, nurses, and hospitals to refuse to participate in an abortion due to religious beliefs or moral conviction.

According to the Albuquerque Journal, six Democrats joined Republicans in the state House to vote against the bill: Anthony Allison of Fruitland; Doreen Wonda Johnson of Church Rock; Patricia Lundstrom of Gallup; Patricio Ruiloba of Albuquerque; Joseph Sanchez of Alcalde; and Candie Sweetser of Deming.

New Mexico already allows abortion up until birth. The current bill would remove a criminal ban on abortion that remains on the books since before the Supreme Court’s invention of a right to abortion in Roe v. Wade in 1973.

Montoya added that the legislation “continues the practice of late term abortion in New Mexico. The abortion industry is not regulated at all in New Mexico.”

In 2017, an autopsy report revealed that a 23-year-old woman died following a third-trimester abortion at Southwestern Women’s Options in Albuquerque – the nation’s largest abortion facility that markets abortions throughout all nine months of pregnancy.

Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has promised to sign the bill if it reaches her desk.

Abortion Free New Mexico – a pro-life organization – is calling upon Catholic Democrats in the state Senate to oppose HB 51 following a statement by the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops:

HB 51 aims to repeal the New Mexico state statute that criminalizes abortion. While the law is currently not enforced due to federal legalization of abortion through the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe v. Wade, two parts of statute (the conscience clause and requirement of the doctor) are not void by the US Supreme Court and are enforced. We oppose HB 51 and urge our legislators to protect the conscience of our healthcare workers and protect women by maintaining the conscience clause and requirement of the doctor.

In addition to New York and Virginia, the state legislatures of Rhode Island and Vermont are weighing radical abortion bills.

Rhode Island Right to Life warned that H 5127, the Reproductive Health Care Act, would “repeal existing constitutional protection for a viable unborn child from criminal assaults on the child’s mother,” and H 5125 would “substantially ‘water down’ the State’s parental consent statute by allowing consent to be obtained from persons who have no constitutional right to give consent (grandparents and adult siblings)” for abortion.

In Vermont, Democrat state Rep. Ann Pugh’s House Bill 57 would make abortion a fundamental right.

The bill claims it is intended “to safeguard the right to abortion in Vermont by ensuring that right is not denied, restricted, or infringed by a governmental entity.”

“A fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus shall not have independent rights under Vermont law,” states the bill, adding, “No State or local law enforcement shall prosecute any individual for inducing, performing, or attempting to induce or perform the individual’s own abortion.”

“[T]he U.S. joins China, North Korea and Canada as one of only four countries whose laws allow unregulated abortion on demand through nine months of pregnancy,” Ovide Lamontagne, former general counsel of Americans United for Life, wrote in a column at the Union Leader last week.

“Compared to ‘progressive’ countries like France and Sweden, where on demand abortion is legal only through 12 weeks and 18 weeks respectively, one can easily see how far the U.S. has moved to advance a culture of death,” he added.

A recent Marist poll showed 75 percent of Americans want substantial restrictions on abortion, including 60 percent of Democrats and 61 percent of those who identify as pro-choice.