June 24, 2023 marked the one-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and the impacts reverberated throughout the country.
NM Political Report marked the year with a series of stories the week of June 24, to take a look back at the changes the previous 12 months had brought. One change we found was in how the Dobbs decision had impacted the way reproductive healthcare training is now taught at universities around the country.
It has meant more medical students are now seeking training at the University of New Mexico Center for Reproductive Health than before. It means that medical students who are training at universities in states where abortion is banned or severely restricted, are not able to receive the integrated training in abortion care that, prior to the Dobbs decision, was expected. The fact that an abortion patient rarely experiences complications means that when a medical student’s abortion care training involves a short stint at a school such as the University of New Mexico Center for Reproductive Health, not all OB-GYN doctors in the U.S. will have the same level of training. Not all doctors will be as prepared as they could be when a medical emergency does arise in another state.
The Dobbs decision also impacted the LGBTQ community in New Mexico and elsewhere because the Dobbs decision unleashed “some real darkness” one advocate said. More than 75 anti-LGBTQ bills were signed into law in the first six months of 2023, leading the Human Rights Campaign to declare a national state of emergency. In New Mexico, legislators instead passed landmark legislation protecting the rights of LGBTQ individuals.
When the court handed down its Dobbs decision in 2022, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham issued two executive orders, one to shield patients and providers from out-of-state efforts to obtain medical records for purposes of prosecution and one to announce her pledge of $10 million to go toward building a full spectrum reproductive health clinic in Las Cruces, near the boundary with Texas. The legislature enacted, and she signed, a bill that made the shield order a law and the $10 million pledge became a part of the budget package in the 2023 legislature.
The end of Roe also galvanized new advocacy organizations to form in the state. Eastern New Mexico Rising grew out of a group of women in municipalities in eastern New Mexico meeting up at a local protest rally that occurred after the Dobbs decision. Individuals such as Denise Lang-Browne, who lives in Alamogordo, protested when governments in the eastern part of the state began passing anti-abortion ordinances and resolutions.
The clinical landscape has changed in New Mexico since Roe fell. Whole Women’s Health relocated to Albuquerque and Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains made medication abortion available at all of its clinics and opened a new brick-and-mortar clinic in Las Cruces.
