Jodi Hendricks of the New Mexico Family Action Movement (NM FAM) tells AFN children will bear the brunt of the bills her organization and others fought through the legislative process and through the governor's office. Though they did not prevail this time around, she asserts that the battle is ongoing.
"We have House Bill 7, which creates unrestricted access to abortion and transgender interventions," she relays. "We have Senate Bill 13, which protects providers and patients who provide or receive or even seek these services for another individual in the state of New Mexico."
Abortion and transgender services are also required on school campuses, and personnel are permitted to transport students who are referred elsewhere for those services – all without any parental involvement.
Hendricks' group has launched a petition drive.
"If we can get 200,000 signatures, those laws stop dead; they are done," she tells AFN. "They do not become law. Instead, they are suspended and then placed on the ballot in the next general election. That would be November of 2024."
Right now, NM FAM is seeking additional volunteers to handle the petitions. Churches are also encouraged to get involved. Both, Hendricks says, will be vital in the effort to successfully stop the laws.
In The Last Frontier, students were recently able to advance the pro-life message, even though their event meant to honor and remember those who have fallen and continue to fall to abortion was met with opposition.
The Arctic Students for Life Club (ASFL) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks decided to set up a "Cemetery of the Innocents," a display of pink crosses to draw attention to fact that at least 2,800 babies are killed in abortions every day.
"We did have some students who did not agree with what we were doing," accounts the ASFL president, Madelin Weeks. She says less than 30 minutes after the display was set up, "they came by and vandalized and actually stole some of our crosses. They also had signs, and they were being slightly aggressive."
Even so, she believes the goal of the event was accomplished.
"Our mission is not to create conflict. We did this to educate, but also to start conversations and just to have mature conversations with the people on campus," Weeks tells AFN. "They asked us questions; we asked them questions. We had some pretty peaceful conversations, and I believe both sides got valuable insight from that."
In response to the vandalization, campus police were called out three times during the event, and their investigation is ongoing. The names of some of the vandals have already been submitted to police.
