New Mexico Is a “Safe Haven” for Abortion Between Texas and Arizona

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 July 2022

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

In New Mexico, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has declared the state a “reproductive safe haven” between Arizona to the west, and Texas to the east. Already, she says, New Mexico’s few abortion clinics are seeing an influx of patients from outside its borders. “When you are a safe-haven state,” she says, “you put real stress on [the] current provider system.” Lujan Grisham speaks with David Remnick about her executive order—issued days after the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs—to prevent the extradition of abortion providers, a request that she expects to see from Texas law enforcement. Dobbs puts states at odds over one of the contentious issues of our time. “They’ve invited states now to fight with each other, sue each other,” she says; this is “the most despicable and horrible aspect, frankly, of this particular decision.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:10.0	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:13.2	In the week since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, many states have issued abortion bans and restrictions,
0:19.6	like the Ohio law that's become infamous,
0:22.9	forcing a 10-year-old victim of rape to travel out of state.
0:26.9	At the same time, many governors and legislatures have acted to protect reproductive rights,
0:32.0	and with no federal law above them, we may see neighboring states in direct conflict over the right to travel for an abortion.
0:40.3	New Mexico's governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, has declared her state a reproductive safe haven
0:45.7	between Arizona and Texas. Days after the Dobbs decision, she issued an executive order to
0:51.7	protect New Mexico's abortion providers from legal action
0:55.7	by those other states.
0:57.5	Lujan Grisham represented New Mexico in the Congress for three terms, and she was elected governor
1:02.0	in 2018.
1:04.1	Governor, I think we knew that the decision from the Supreme Court was coming once the
1:10.0	opinion leaked, but I would love to know
1:12.6	what your reaction was on the day it did come out. And what has it been like in your office?
1:20.2	Well, I think like most Americans, and polling is certainly showing that, I woke up to that decision and you're sick to your stomach.
1:30.7	Because we humans hang on to, you know, whatever piece of potential hope.
1:36.7	But frankly, we've been preparing for that ultimate decision by this Supreme Court in New Mexico for more than a year because the risks
1:46.4	in this national political debate about our constitutional rights to privacy and a constitutional
1:52.9	right to reproductive care, abortion, and abortion care has been the subject of such angst
1:59.1	and anger and misinformation in this country for longer than
	...

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