The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 77/No. 34      September 30, 2013

 
New Mexico rally defends women’s
right to choose abortion
 
BY SUSAN LAMONT  
Some 250 supporters of women’s right to choose abortion rallied at Civic Plaza in Albuquerque, N.M., Aug. 20 to oppose a referendum to ban abortions after 20 weeks within the city. Participants also protested recent efforts by the rightist anti-abortion outfit “Operation Rescue” to target a local clinic where late-term abortions are performed.

“We are planning on defeating this referendum,” Mike McCoy of the New Mexico American Civil Liberties Union chapter said in a Sept. 13 phone interview. Organizations defending abortion rights have launched a campaign called “Respect Albuquerque Women” to urge a “no” vote on the ballot measure, McCoy said. The campaign includes the National Organization for Women (Santa Fe), New Mexico Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, ACLU of New Mexico and the state League of Women Voters.

“With the intensity of the anti-abortion protests, we are working to make sure that women retain control of their own bodies in New Mexico,” said Micaela Cadena, of Young Women United, one of the campaign’s supporting groups. “We trust women to make these decisions for themselves.”

Doctors who work at Southwestern Women’s Options have also become targets for the rightists. The clinic is one of only four in the country that perform third-trimester abortions.

Some 30 anti-abortionists picketed in front of one doctor’s home Aug. 10 with signs and megaphones. The California-based “Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust” group trains “people to end abortion by training them to expose abortionists,” Kristina Garza, told the Albuquerque Journal.

The group also visited the small New Mexico Holocaust and Intolerance Museum “to argue for inclusion of a panel about abortion in the United States,” the Journal reported Aug. 13. The museum was founded in 2001 by Holocaust survivor Werner Gellert.

Two physicians who worked at Dr. George Tiller’s Wichita, Kan., clinic, also a late-term abortion facility, came to Southwestern Women’s Options after Tiller’s 2009 murder by an anti-abortion rightist that resulted in the closure of Tiller’s clinic.

“Since Dr. Tiller’s murder, we have had an increase in anti-abortion picketing at Planned Parenthood’s clinic in Albuquerque,” said Julianna Koob of Planned Parenthood. “And the Southwestern clinic is picketed two or three times a week.” Planned Parenthood is part of the Respect Albuquerque Women campaign, Koob added.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home