SANTA FE, New Mexico (LifeSiteNews) — The New Mexico Senate Tax Committee has voted 6-4 to advance legislation that would force insurance companies to subsidize abortion, contraception, and “gender transition” procedures, with religious entities exempted from contraceptives but not the other objectionable items.
SB 189 requires group health insurance plans to “provide coverage for the total cost of [so-called] abortion care” and “gender-affirming care” (defined as any “procedure, service, drug, device or product [to treat] incongruence between the individual’s gender identity and the individual’s sex assignment at birth”; and “at least one product or form of contraception in each of the contraceptive method categories identified by the federal food and drug administration,” plus contraception’s “related clinical services.”
It also establishes a “special enrollment period to provide coverage to an uninsured person if the person is eligible to be insured and provides a certification from a health care provider to the insurer that the person is pregnant.”
The bill does say that a “religious entity purchasing individual or group health insurance coverage may elect to exclude prescription contraceptive drugs or devices from the health coverage purchased” but contains no comparable language exempting them from abortion or “gender reassignment,” opening religious hospitals and religious staff to being forced to participate in such procedures.
Live Action reports that the bill is being “fast-tracked” through the legislative process at Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s request. Democrats control both chambers of the New Mexico legislature by comfortable margins, so SB 189 should have little difficulty reaching her desk to be signed into law.
“This bill gets priorities backwards. It subsidizes ideologically driven elective abortions 98% used as birth control and life elective gender surgery while ignoring life-saving, medically necessary health care,” testified Elisa Martinez of New Mexico Alliance for Life.
New Mexico has been an aggressive supporter of abortion “choice” at the expense of the choices of those who object. In 2024, it spent $400,000 of taxpayer money advertising to “cordially and enthusiastically invite” abortionists in other states to relocate. Last year, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened an investigation into New Mexico’s Presbyterian Hospital for attempting to force medical staff to participate in abortions.