U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said at a Planned Parenthood space for LGBTQ youth in Albuquerque that if President Joe Biden wins a second term, he will continue the work he’s already doing to protect access to reproductive healthcare.

Becerra visited Albuquerque as part of a multi-state tour in the southwest and west to emphasize that Biden is doing all he can to protect reproductive healthcare. While on the Reproductive Health for All tour, Becerra is making similar stops in Arizona, California and Nevada.

Becerra met with a group of reproductive justice advocates and medical professionals before meeting with the press on Tuesday morning. Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller and Dr. Eve Espey, University of New Mexico distinguished professor and chair of Department of OB-GYN in the School of Family Planning, also spoke during the press conference. 

Becerra said the Health and Human Services Department launched the tour “to make sure it’s clear to people what their rights are.” He said Biden asked him to “make sure everyone understands what rights they have and the access they have and that we will protect it the best we can within the federal government.” 

“In New Mexico, you have the right to access the care you need if you’re a woman, but reproductive access across the state line is so very different a story,” he said. 

New Mexico has some of the most progressive reproductive and gender affirming healthcare laws in the U.S., many of which were passed in 2023. The state is considered a safe haven state as Republican-led states, including neighboring Texas and Arizona, enact bans on abortion and gender-affirming care. 

Becerra said that if Democrats win both houses of Congress in November, as well as send Biden back to the White House, Democrats would work to pass a statute to restore the rights that Roe v. Wade made available to women. 

He said that if Democrats gain a majority in both chambers in November, Democrats would also try to address the provisions in federal funding, such as the Hyde Amendment, that makes it difficult to provide reproductive healthcare to Indigenous women. But some Democrats, in the past, have supported keeping the Hyde Amendment, even when Democrats held a slim majority in both congressional chambers.

The Hyde Amendment was established by a former senator in the late 1970s as a response to the U.S. Supreme Court deciding Roe v. Wade in 1973. The rider, attached to every budget passed through Congress for nearly 50 years, prevents federal money from being spent on abortion care. That rider affects federal employees, service men and women and Indigenous people who receive healthcare through Indian Health Services. The amendment contains exceptions only for rape, incest or life endangerment. Biden announced he does not support the Hyde Amendment in 2019. But Republicans refuse to agree to the budget bill, which generally requires bipartisan support, if the Hyde Amendment is not attached.

Many in the reproductive justice community in New Mexico consider the Hyde Amendment discriminatory and another form of control over Native bodies, in particular. Native sovereign nations have already been impacted by past U.S. genocidal policies such as forced boarding schools and forced sterilization. 

Rachel Lorenzo, Mescalero Apache, Laguna Pueblo and Xicana and founder of the abortion fund provider Indigenous Women Rising, told NM Political Report that they respectfully disagree with Becerra about restoring the protections that Roe v. Wade provided. Lorenzo uses they/them pronouns.

“We know that Roe was mostly about privacy and making one’s own decision about abortion. Native people didn’t have the best access to abortion care [prior to the court overturning Roe], so restoring Roe wouldn’t do a whole lot to help marginalized communities. If we didn’t have access before it wouldn’t help us,” Lorenzo said. 

Lorenzo said there needs to be more comprehensive reproductive healthcare across Indian Country, including through Indian Health Services. 

Charlene Bencomo, executive director of the policy and research nonprofit Bold Futures, told NM Political Report that “it is wonderful that they [the Biden administration] are placing attention on reproductive healthcare.” But she is disappointed that much of the burden to provide access to legal and safe abortion and other reproductive healthcare remains with the state government. 

“We have limited support from our federal government and we know we need more. We need to repeal the Hyde Amendment,” Bencomo said. 

Keller welcomed Becerra to Albuquerque and said that in places such as Florida, abortion bans have resulted in billions of dollars in negative economic impact. Florida enacted a six-week abortion ban earlier this year.

Only nine states, including New Mexico, do not have a gestational restriction on abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive research nonprofit.

“I want to highlight that things can be much different in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Our city stepped up to enable funds for Planned Parenthood. We codified protections for abortion in New Mexico,” Keller said. 

Related: ABQ city council reaffirms $250K for Planned Parenthood, includes funds for housing nonprofits

Espey said there is such a level of fear for OB-GYN providers in Texas that they say to patients, “we hear the sunsets are beautiful in New Mexico,” as a coded way to recommend their patients travel to New Mexico for an abortion. 

Reverend Erika Ferguson, who is based in Texas, said she works with the abortion fund provider Faith Roots Reproductive Action to help individuals travel from Texas to New Mexico for an abortion. Ferguson said she helped an abortion patient who panicked about traveling by plane and equated the work she is doing with abolitionist Harriet Tubman who escaped slavery, then helped others also escape slavery in the 1800s. 

Amy Levi, a midwife, also spoke and called providing abortion care “a team sport,” and said nurse midwives and other medical staff “provide little bits of care all along the way.”

Becerra spoke of the misinformation about abortion care and the fear the current climate of varying state laws and federal court cases have caused for the past two years. He said that when the court struck Roe v. Wade, “we lost more than access to quality healthcare.” 

“My wife is a high-risk OB-GYN. There’s no reason a doctor should have to consult a legal opinion before rendering a medical opinion. We hope to change that,” Becerra said.