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By Brad Brooks
HOBBS, New Mexico, Nov 7 (Reuters) – A New Mexico city close to the Texas border on Monday unanimously handed an ordinance designed to ban abortions, regardless of the process of 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 Celebration, in response to 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 USA, has advised Reuters it was occupied with 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 may 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 difficulty. 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 authorised.
“That is simply heaven! We’re main the best way and perhaps, finally, we are able to flip this state round,” stated 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 lady 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 apply, and all girls have the appropriate to entry remedy abortion companies, regardless of the place in New Mexico they name dwelling.”
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 stated 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 positioned in conservative jap New Mexico. Clovis additionally doesn’t presently have an abortion clinic. Each are thought-about take a look at instances for a 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 stays authorized.
“There are individuals everywhere in the United States which can be desirous to see their cities take steps to guard the well being and welfare of unborn kids, and I imagine that this may be the trail ahead for each single state in America,” Dickson stated after the vote.
Whereas Entire Girl’s Well being has been occupied with opening a clinic in Hobbs or Clovis to serve girls coming from Texas into New Mexico searching for the process, the cities’ embrace of the “sanctuary metropolis for the unborn” motion is now giving the supplier pause. (Reporting by Brad Brooks in Hobbs, New Mexico; Enhancing by Donna Bryson and Edwina Gibbs)
