New Mexico braces for influx after Supreme Court allows Texas abortion restrictions

Italia Aranda, who works as an abortion care counselor at the Mariposa Fund in New Mexico, expects to be putting in even longer hours now that a restrictive anti-abortion law has gone into effect in neighboring Texas.

She’ll be far from the only one.

Across New Mexico — where there are few restrictions on abortion — providers, abortion funds and practical support groups are preparing, financially, logistically and emotionally, to help provide care to an anticipated influx of patients from Texas, who will no longer be able to receive it in their home state.

Experts say Texas State Bill 8, the new anti-abortion law, is the most restrictive one allowed by courts to stand in decades.

“Every time Texas passes some kind of bill restricting abortion, we see more people seeking care here in New Mexico. And this time, with S.B. 8., the worst, most restrictive we’ve ever seen, we’re definitely preparing to serve a significant number of additional patients seeking refuge from the new Texas law,” said Joan Lamunyon Sanford, executive director of the New Mexico Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, an Albuquerque-based abortion fund that partners with other funds and networks across Texas and the United States.

S.B. 8, which went into effect Wednesday after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to block the law, bans abortions after fetal cardiac activity is detected, a point that could occur as early as six weeks into pregnancy — before many women even know they are pregnant.

And unlike other states’ anti-abortion laws, Texas’ unique ban is enforced through private citizens’ lawsuits against abortion providers, rather than through state government. It includes first-of-its-kind language that allows anyone, even people outside Texas, to sue an abortion provider or anyone else who helped someone get the procedure after the six-week limit and seek damages of $10,000 per defendant.