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New Mexico Town Votes Unanimously to Become Sanctuary City for Unborn Despite Governor’s Abortion Radicalism

BY: JORDAN BOYD | NOVEMBER 16, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/11/16/new-mexico-town-votes-unanimously-to-become-sanctuary-city-for-unborn-despite-governors-abortion-radicalism/

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In a direct rebuke to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s radical abortion agenda, the City Council of Hobbs, New Mexico, unanimously voted last week to become a sanctuary city for the unborn. Overwhelming support for and passage of the ordinance mean abortion is now classified as murder and outlawed within Hobbs city limits. It also means that any blue politicians or abortion facilities that try to go against the city’s wishes could face an uphill legal battle.

The vote was vehemently opposed by Lujan Grisham, who called the architects of the ordinance “out-of-state extremists.” The governor’s reaction is no surprise considering her own history of abortion extremism.

Shortly after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision, Lujan Grisham signed an executive order designating $10 million in taxpayer funds toward the development of an abortion facility in Doña Ana County, an area that shares a border with El Paso, Texas. That was just a couple of months after Lujan Grisham signed an executive order “protecting medical providers from attempts at legal retribution” for granting abortions and refusing to comply with other states’ abortion extradition laws.

“As more states move to restrict and prohibit access to reproductive care, New Mexico will continue to not only protect access to abortion, but to expand and strengthen reproductive health care throughout the state,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement. “Today, I reaffirm my resolve to make sure that women and families in New Mexico — and beyond — are supported at every step of the way.”

Since then, abortion dominated the state’s political scene and even became a focal point in Lujan Grisham’s re-election race against Republican challenger Mark Ronchetti.

Amy Hagstrom Miller, the CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, one of the nation’s largest dealers of abortion, previously told Reuters that Lujan Grisham’s friendliness toward abortion led her to consider relocating some of their Texas facilities closer to the border with New Mexico.

The goal was to offer abortion to women in neighboring Texas cities such as Lubbock, which voted to become a sanctuary city for the unborn in May of 2021, following the Lone Star State’s ban on abortion via the Texas Heartbeat Act.

Residents of Hobbs, a nearly 40,000-person town, however, weren’t taking any chances on getting swept up in Lujan Grisham’s pro-abortion executive spree. The pro-life community in Hobbs as well as the nearby city of Clovis revolted with the introduction of ordinances designed to protect unborn babies.

The threat of legal challenges thanks to widespread support for those sanctuary city ordinances, Hagstrom Miller confessed, “has given her pause about operating in eastern New Mexico.”

“In this post-Dobbs era, where anti-abortion folks are emboldened, I want to be sure we’re in a place where our patients can be safe, where our doctors and our staff can be safe,” she said.

The Clovis City Commission postponed its vote on the ordinance allegedly so it can “perfect the language to better protect against litigation.” “We hope this sends the message to our state legislature that there are pro-life cities out there and we want to self-determine on this issue,” Clovis Mayor Mike Morris said shortly after a vote to advance the ban.

If Clovis passes the ordinance, it will join Hobbs and a myriad of other towns that all recently decided to push back against Democrats’ abortion extremism.

“Between Governor Abbott’s resounding defeat of Robert Francis O’Rourke to four more municipalities joining over fifty towns with existing sanctuary city for the unborn ordinances, this is an exciting time for Texans as we work to end abortion,” Texas Right to Life President Dr. John Seago told The Federalist. “Additionally, as the abortion industry looks to target Texas women from just outside our borders, it is equally exciting that Hobbs, New Mexico has joined the fight and passed the ordinance to keep the desperate abortion industry out of their city limits.”

The pro-life movements in Texas and New Mexico have been so effective recently that they’ve even earned the wrath of the Biden White House.

“We have been very clear about what MAGA extreme Republicans are trying to do when it comes to a woman’s rights to choose,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a recent trip to New Mexico with President Joe Biden. “They’re trying to take that away, clearly, and in the most extreme ways. What it’s doing is it’s putting women — women and girls’ lives at risk.”

This article was updated on 11/16 to reflect that members of the Clovis City Commission are no longer unanimously “expected to vote in favor of the ban.”

“The Ordinance, as it stands now, is ready. The commission, however, is unready and unwilling,” Mark Lee Dickson, founder of the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn Initiative, told The Federalist.

Dickson also said that Clovis Mayor Mike Morris is facing backlash after he was “pressured by several Republicans to push things past the election and even past the legislative session.”

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.