Tag: New Mexico

Bill to decriminalize abortion passes House committee

The NM Political Report

Susan Dunlap

The House Health and Human Services Committee approved a bill that would decriminalize abortion by a vote of 8 to 3, including one Republican who crossed the aisle.

State House Rep. Phelps Anderson, a Republican from Roswell, sided with the seven Democrats on the committee who voted yes to HB 7. Just before the bill went to vote, Anderson expressed some of his views.

“Many people who have spoken to me have expressed strong opinions but I find myself saying I’m not sure one voting yes or no changes anything that is very important to me and, secondly, the issues that have been raised are not encompassed within this bill,” Anderson said.

HB 7 will, if it passes the full New Mexico Legislature, repeal a law written in 1969. The law bans abortion except for cases of incest, rape, the life of the patient or severe mental or physical problems for the fetus. The law is not enforceable because of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision. . . . [Full text]

19 State Attorneys General Declare Opposition to HHS’ Proposed Conscientious Objection Rule

New York Law Journal

Kristen Rasmu

A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services proposed rule that would more vigorously protect health care providers’ ability to deny coverage in certain circumstances because of moral or religious beliefs should be withdrawn, according to a coalition of state attorneys general.

The proposed rule would strengthen the enforcement of existing regulations that allow providers to invoke conscientious objections as a basis for refusing to provide care that involves certain medical issues, including abortion, sterilization, assisted suicide and others. It also would allow individual providers to object to informing patients about their medical options or referring them to providers of those options. . . [Full Text]

UNM suspends physician’s research

Albuquerque Journal

Jessica Dyer

The University of New Mexico has suspended a physician’s research while investigating her transfer of human tissue to a private company and whether she had the proper approvals for any underlying study, internal documents show.

Officials suspended Dr. Robin Ohls’ research duties and barred her from her lab in October after learning she had acquired fetal tissue for months from the Southwestern Women’s Options abortion clinic and transferred it to a private company in Michigan, according to an internal memo obtained by the Journal. . . [Full Text]

Dying Dutch: Euthanasia Spreads Across Europe

Newsweek

Winston Ross

In one of the last photographs my family took of my grandmother, she looks as if she’s been in a fistfight. Jean Bass Tinsley is lying in a hospital bed in Athens, Georgia, wearing a turquoise button-up shirt and staring blankly at the camera. A bandage obscures her fractured skull, along with the bridge of her bloodied nose. She is 91 years old.

My grandmother essentially did this to herself. In June 2013, she fell out of her wheelchair headfirst, after ignoring her caregivers’ warnings not to get out of bed without help. Earlier that year, she’d broken both of her hips, in separate falls. Before that, her pelvis-all while trying to do what for most of her life she’d managed just fine on her own: walk.

In her last year, dementia crept into my grandmother’s mind. The staff at her long-term-care facility plotted ways to protect her from herself. It’s against the law in Georgia to restrain patients in such facilities, so they lowered her bed to the floor and put a pad down next to it. They even installed an alarm that went off if she left her mattress. My grandmother disabled the alarm, moved the pad and freed herself, repeatedly. In the end, she was both too weak and too strong. [Full text]