The New Yorker Radio Hour - New Mexico Is a “Safe Haven” for Abortion Between Texas and Arizona

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

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.” New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. In the week since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, many states have issued abortion bans and restrictions, like the Ohio law that's become infamous, forcing a 10-year-old victim of rape to travel out of state. At the same time, many governors and legislatures have acted to protect reproductive rights, and with no federal law above them, we may see neighboring states in direct conflict over the right to travel for an abortion. New Mexico's governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, has declared her state a reproductive safe haven between Arizona and Texas. Days after the Dobbs decision, she issued

an executive order to protect New Mexico's abortion providers from legal action by those other states. Lujan Grisham represented New Mexico in the Congress for three terms and she was elected governor in 2018. Governor, I think we knew that the decision from the Supreme Court was coming once the opinion leaked. But I would love to know what your reaction was

on the day it did come out. And what has it been like in your office? 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 because we humans hang on to, you know, whatever piece of potential hope. 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 in this national political debate about our constitutional rights to privacy

and a constitutional right to reproductive care, abortion, and abortion care has been the subject of such angst and anger and misinformation in this country for longer than just the last several months. Well, you say you have been preparing at the state house and in your office. How did you prepare? What plans did you make? Well, the first thing that we did is we had an antiquated criminalization of abortion statute on the books.

never had been used. Frankly, I would say that most providers, most attorneys, and certainly most New Mexicans, had no idea that it existed. So actually, in 2019, I tried to repeal it right after I was elected, and I failed by just a couple of votes, and we finally got it done, and we did that a year before this ultimate decision by the Supreme Court. And we invested in more family planning, more access to contraceptives, in addition to our core family planning access points like public health, school-based health centers, making sure it's readily available through your physicians, our physician access programs, all of our infectious disease and public health harm reduction, all those investments have all been targeted to improve our public health outcomes

related to the potential that Roe v. Wade was always at risk. Governor, New Mexico is a blue state situated between Texas and Arizona. You even share a bit of a border with Oklahoma as well. They all have abortion bans of some kind, and they're all quite conservative. Now, I don't think that the leaders of Texas and Arizona are going to be thrilled if you open more clinics and you refuse extradition. So are you worried about reprisals from those states and their leaderships? In this context, if you're not thinking or concerned about what could occur and being embattled in litigation,

I think this is what the Supreme Court teed up. The first issue is that they have discriminated against women and other populations, including LGBTQ populations, and they are limiting health care access, chilling, outrageous, discriminatory, and we should do everything in our power to do something about it. But the second thing that they've done is they've invited states now to fight with each other, sue each other, and create in the number of really harsh. I'm looking for the right word. The fact that another state, frankly, can try to sue a provider that's licensed here,

because they're also licensed in another state, challenging all of our current, right, insurance, certification, regulatory aspects for health care access in this country. Because in my view, they're trying to control women is the most disgusting and despicable aspect, frankly, of this particular decision. It is what it is inviting. Can you imagine Texas, forgive me. I do. I imagine Texas and their attorney general. look what's going on in Indiana. I absolutely imagine that we will have politicians for political gain on this issue in the most narrow manner who will prosecute and persecute women, children, their families, and providers, and to take that to the nth degree.

You anticipate Texas law enforcement backed up by the politics and the politicians of Texas, possibly making arrests on women seeking abortions in New Mexico? Certainly attempting. If I didn't think that, there would be no reason to have an executive order saying this is what we'll do to protect providers and patients and their families in New Mexico. Governor, explain what was in the executive auditor. The executive order was to, frankly, prepare the state and to make sure that government, state government, could not be used as a vehicle to support another state, who would reach in here to prevent their citizens and residents from seeking abortion and abortion care in New Mexico, including that they would prosecute, and in my view, persecute then providers who are providing that access,

who might also have a license in their states. So it's to make it clear that where we will cooperate, and we still will, on other real criminal actions, where you do want to do extradition and cooperate. I don't consider this a criminal action. Neither does New Mexico. So you envision the possibility of opening even more clinics? I do. How are clinics responding to this new reality?

Because you are situated between and among states that are going to come down very hard on abortion, and I assume you're already seeing people coming from those states to New Mexico to the few abortion clinics that you have? We are. When you're a safe haven state, this is exactly the impact, which means you put real stress on your current provider system. And we are now seeing a situation where we have waiting lists. What kind of politics have resulted in your policy and your reaction to Dobbs? What kind of opposition have you felt? I haven't seen the same kind of opposition.

that we're seeing around the country. I've seen the opposite. You know, a rallying of support by most New Mexicans who were outraged by not only this decision, but quite frankly, the Thomas, Clarence Thomas writing that said, look, as long as we're there, let's talk about privacy issues and well-settled law for other populations.

I'm talking with Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico. More in a moment. You are up for re-election. Your opponent in the race is a Republican named Mark Ronketti. And he has said that 15 weeks should be the limit for abortion. So he's not an absolutist on this. He's not on the right wing on this spectrum. Would you support some limit or compromise, as he's suggesting?

No. There are far, if you really are in a situation where you are protecting women's privacy rights and the relationship between their medical providers. My attitudes and my personal decisions and the governments have no bearing on those personal decisions. There is no question that I believe, like many Americans, that abortion should be rare.

And the reason I believe that is because we should be doing more for violence, rape, domestic abuse, incest, underage, sexual activity, non-consensual, all of it. If we did better family planning at comprehensive sex education and made contraceptives more available and we were better at primary care access, then you get to the place where we should all be preventing unwanted, unexpected pregnancies. But to say that I can make a personal decision for women who currently do not have those options, particularly in states where they don't have access to contraceptives, well, that is outrageous to me. Your state has the highest percentage of Latino voters of any state, and that's a demographic that supported you quite heavily. But Latino voters in the state have tended not to support abortion rights in the majority.

Is there a risk here for you and for the Democratic Party in the state of New Mexico? Well, I don't think so. And in New Mexico, where we're a Hispanic majority, you know, minority majority state. And I am certainly, you're talking about 400 years. My family's in that same space. And many of us, not all of us, but many of us are Catholic and very clear about. about what the church says about abortion and abortion access and even contraceptives. But if you take a step back, even here in New Mexico,

and given that we repealed our criminalization of abortion, most Hispanic families and women, most Hispanic men today, do not want, so the majority of those voters do not want the government in this space. So you don't see this hurting your chances for re-election? I do not. Just the opposite. Just the opposite. Governor, in the past few years, particularly coming in the midst of the Trump years in their aftermath,

we have heard warnings about civil war of various kinds and degrees, and certainly something this country has experienced in the past. Are you concerned about political violence as you declares? Claire, New Mexico, a pro-choice state amidst Texas and Arizona who are on the opposite side. That's a really hard question because I want to respond in this way. But we don't need to be concerned about that violence because New Mexico isn't going to tolerate that. But in fact, what we're seeing across the country and in some circumstances, even here, we know that the threats of violence, are real, that we're seeing that tension escalate all across the country. And if I or anyone

suggest that you shouldn't be concerned about it, it's an immature response. I'm hopeful that this is a state and other states that protect people and that that protection and that recognition of your own civil rights and choices can create a space where we can have discourse about better solutions to public health issues. I mean, we are not talking in the context of the Dobbs decision, as I started in this interview, about child well-being and maternal health and poverty. I hope New Mexico can be a beacon for those investments and interventions, and that will create a better space for all Americans.

Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Michelle Lujan Grisham is Governor of New Mexico, and she's running for a second term in November. I'm David Remnick, and that's our program. I want to thank you for joining us.

See you soon. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Bredo, Brita Green, Kalalia, David Krasnow, Louis Mitchell, and Gophane and Putabwelle. Along with Jeffrey Masters, Willi, and Michael May.

And we had assistance from Harrison Keithline and James Napoli. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.