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Student organizations across UNM are mobilizing to help spread the word on the proposed abortion ban which Albuquerque voters will decide on in less than two weeks.
Shaya Rogers, a member of the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, a pro-abortion rights group on campus, said her organization started to advocate against the measure about a month ago.
“It’s been a pretty recent thing that we started to try to put together more events — more tabling, trying to spread the word as much as we can,” she said.
Samantha Serrano, founder and president of Students for Life at UNM, an anti-abortion organization on campus, said her group started campaigning in favor of the ordinance at about the same time. But she said Students for Life had been involved with the initiative from the start.
“We participated in the collection of signatures and things like that,” she said. ”So, we’ve been helping out since the beginning.”
Albuquerque residents will be able to vote whether to approve or to reject the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Ordinance, which will be on the ballot for the city’s runoff elections on Nov. 19. If passed, the ordinance would ban all abortions in the city after 20 weeks, with exceptions for physical conditions that endanger the life of the mother.
Rogers said FMLA does not support the measure because it does not provide exceptions for rape, incest or fetal anomalies, and because it endangers the life of the mother. She said the clause that makes exceptions for physical endangerment is not sufficient to protect the woman.
“It does say there are exceptions if there’s irreversible damage or if the woman is dying,” she said. “From our perspective, that’s too late, we don’t want the woman to have irreversible damage before a call is made. We don’t want a doctor to feel like his or her job is at stake for making that sort of call.”
According to the ordinance, for an abortion after 20 weeks to take place, there would have to be a “life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself, but not including psychological or emotional conditions.” Doctors who performed the abortion would have to do so in a way that “offers the best opportunity for the unborn child to survive,” unless this method results in the death or “substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function” of the woman.
Serrano said her organization wants people to vote for the ordinance because babies can feel pain after 20 weeks.
“They feel pain at an excruciating rate, and it’s terrible to put any human being through that amount of pain,” she said. “We’re trying to protect these babies, as well as protect the women who are going in and getting such a dangerous procedure.”
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The law as it is now is already putting women in danger because late-term abortion procedures can cause damage, Serrano said.
Serrano also said that although she wants to support women who have been the victims of rape or incest, abortion may not be the right answer.
“I think that rape and incest are very terrible things and I think that we should support the woman as much as we can,” she said. “But in those situations, I think we need to start questioning if abortion is really the correct option for her.”
Still, Serrano said the since the ban would only eliminate abortion after 20 weeks, women would have time earlier in the pregnancy to undergo the procedure.
Students for Life has worked with other groups such as the Albuquerque Voters for the Late-Term Ban organization and Protect ABQ Women and Children.
But Rogers said her organization is also concerned about taxpayer money being wasted if the ordinance goes to court.
“It’s going to cost our city a lot of money if it passes and it ends up going to court,” she said. “We want to try to take that out of the whole equation and make sure that everybody votes against it.”
FMLA has also been working with various other organizations, such as Respect ABQ Women and Young Women United, to spread the word about the ordinance, Rogers said.
Rogers said she encourages students to get out and vote on the ordinance and educate themselves.
“Don’t be swayed by either side because of propaganda or stuff that you see or you hear,” she said. “Go read it. Read the ban yourself, and take from it what you will. And recognize that this measure does greatly affect the women in your lives.”
