New Mexico governor fears a national ban on abortion
The governor recently signed two bills into law protecting abortion providers and guaranteeing access to reproductive and gender-affirming care in her state.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said Sunday she is worried the U.S. is headed toward a national ban on abortion, as state legislatures and courts move to squeeze abortion access across the country.
“It’s every social issue that you disagree with, is it stem cell research, is it fertility, drugs, whatever it is, in this context, if we’re going to use the federal courts as a way to bar and ban access, we are looking at a national abortion ban and more,” Lujan Grisham said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
The Democratic governor recently signed two bills into law protecting abortion providers and guaranteeing access to reproductive and gender-affirming care, just as a judge in neighboring Texas moved to suspend the FDA’s approval of mifepristone — one of two drugs used together to cause an abortion.
With the fate of mifepristone now tied up in the courts, a number of states which support access to abortion have moved to stockpile the drug. But states need to do more than build up a cache of the abortion pill, Lujan Grisham said.
“We were going to make sure — we already are — that we have access to all of those medications,” she told host Margaret Brennan. “But if the response is we’ll stockpile instead of protecting all access, then we’re minimizing the work that we have to do to make sure that women and families are fully protected.”
The New Mexico legislation that Lujan Grisham signed puts no restrictions on when during a pregnancy a woman can get an abortion.
“These are horrific medical conditions. And again, New Mexico’s position, and mine, is that we should not be interfering with a woman’s right medical situation and her decision about that life-threatening potential circumstance,” Lujan Grisham said. “We shouldn’t be doing that.”