Friday is a solemn day for many New Mexicans as two bills rammed through the 2021 Legislature will take effect, including assisted suicide via lethal drug “cocktails” and abortion up-to-birth, widening the door to infanticide in the state and criminalizing health workers who object to abortion.
The assisted suicide bill is opposed by multiple disability rights groups, the Navajo Nation, and many patients living with terminal conditions. The law seeks to further normalize a culture of death in New Mexico by letting medical professionals prescribe lethal drugs to patients who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness that could take their lives anytime up to six months.
The bill would legalize doctors to prescribe a “cocktail” of lethal drugs to patients suffering from terminal illnesses, which will save insurance companies money. The American Medical Association is against assisted suicide.
During the bill’s hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sunday, the “expert witnesses,” law professor Robert Schwartz and physician Steven Kanig could not even list the drugs that would be prescribed to end an individual’s life and admitted that there is no set “cocktail” that is used. Schwartz claimed the concoction of harmful drugs “has been refined over the years” and that “these drugs do change.”
The abortion bill passed through the Legislature and signed by embattled Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who claims to be a Catholic, stripped away protections for women and their children in the womb and removed “conscientious objection” protections for physicians and medical professionals.
The pro-abortion law allows sex traffickers and child abusers to take a pregnant minor in for an abortion without any parental knowledge or involvement–not to mention without any reporting criteria.
With this law, a pregnant mother would be allowed to have an abortion at any pregnancy stage. It is a medical fact that the risk of death or serious injury to women increases to 76.6% in abortions after five months.
Despite loud opposition on both of these bills, which were previously defeated in past legislative sessions, the public was cut off and limited to ten minutes of testimony on each side of the argument during “virtual” committee hearings while a fence was erected around the Capitol building to keep the people out of the People’s House.
According to the Albuquerque Journal, “In preparation for the [assisted suicide] bill’s effective date, a new nonprofit group has been created to give information to families with ailing loved ones, and raise awareness of the new law among hospitals, doctors and hospice care providers.”
The Piñon Post organized New Mexicans to oppose these bills, which infringe on Constitutional rights enshrined in our Country’s founding documents. Our editor, John Block, testified alongside other New Mexicans against the abortion up-to-birth bill and prepared testimony against the assisted suicide bill. Despite the Piñon Post’s efforts, the closed-off Roundhouse made it nearly impossible to reach members of the Legislature.