Abortion rights advocates in New Mexico are reacting to reports that the Trump Administration will end federal funding for family planning clinics that provide abortions or refer patients to other abortion providers.
Family planning centers that don’t provide abortion services sometimes refer women to clinics that do. Under the proposal, they’d have to stop making referrals if they wanted to continue receiving federal funding.
Lili Gomez says giving women less information would only hurt them. She’s with WestFund, a group that raises money to help patients pay for abortions in New Mexico.
"Reproductive justice isn’t just abortion," she said. "It’s all kinds of forms of health care that affect a person’s reproductive and bodily autonomy to do reproductive care for themselves whether it be birth control or yearly pap smears or things like that."
When clinics have less money, she says, that could make it harder for them to offer services like cancer screenings and birth control.
The Trump Administration’s proposal wouldn’t prevent providers from discussing abortion as a family planning option, but it would remove a requirement that they do so.
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KUNM’s Public Health New Mexico project is funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the McCune Charitable Foundation, and the Con Alma Health Foundation.
