SANTA FE – A city of about 3,000 residents in southeastern New Mexico has filed a legal challenge against a new state law that guarantees access to abortion.
The lawsuit by the city of Eunice was filed Monday in state District Court and adds to a thicket of legislation and litigation in New Mexico in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last year to rescind the constitutional right to abortion.
The U.S. Supreme Court is leaving women’s access to a widely used abortion pill untouched until at least Friday, while the justices consider whether to allow restrictions on the drug mifepristone to take effect.
Eunice is among five local jurisdictions in eastern New Mexico that have enacted local anti-abortion ordinances since late last year, referencing provisions of a 19th century federal law that restricts the shipping of supplies intended to aid abortions.
“We believe and I believe that all the abortion industries in New Mexico are working against federal statute, so they should be closed down,” said Republican state Sen. David Gallegos, of Eunice, on Wednesday. “I know that’s not the governor’s premise.”
New Mexico’s Democratic governor signed an abortion-rights bill in March that overrides local ordinances aimed at limiting access to abortion procedures and medications and guarantees access broadly to reproductive health care.
Eunice officials, including the mayor, could not be immediately reached by phone. Gallegos traveled to Washington earlier in the week to join a group that announced the city’s lawsuit outside the U.S. Supreme Court building.
Democratic state Attorney General Raúl Torrez has petitioned the New Mexico Supreme Court to intervene and to prohibit local governments from denying access to reproductive health care.
The attorney general's office says Eunice is raising the same arguments as other local jurisdictions in support of abortion ordinances.
“The (state) Supreme Court is better situated to address these issues in the first instance, and the attorney general's office will be seeking a stay of the district court action,” the agency said in a statement.
Anti-abortion ordinances in Lea and Roosevelt counties and the cities of Hobbs and Clovis have been placed on hold as the high court in Santa Fe awaits written briefs from all parties.
In 2021, New Mexico’s Democrat-led Legislature passed a measure to repeal a dormant 1969 statute that outlawed most abortion procedures, which ensured access to abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision last year.
New Mexico is viewed increasingly as a destination for abortion patients from states, including Texas, with strict abortion bans.
