In fight against new abortion facility, New Mexico’s pro-lifers join forces

After more than a year of delays, construction has resumed at the site of a future abortion facility in southern New Mexico. If completed, the publicly funded Las Cruces facility would perform chemical and surgical abortions, even on full-term babies. It could also become a major abortion training ground for medical students.

Pro-life advocates in New Mexico are banding together to stop the project. While it’s not yet clear whether they’ll succeed, their effort is catalyzing increased cooperation among pro-lifers in the state.

State officials broke ground on the facility in September 2024, but pro-lifers in the area urged local and regional subcontractors not to take the job. The effort successfully stalled work as contractors refused to bid on the project.

“The facade is it’s a medical center,” said Jessica Sifuentes, CEO and president of the Southwest Coalition for Life, which has led the effort to stop construction. Sifuentes said many contractors have not been informed that the building will be an abortion facility and training center. “The information that [the state] is not giving is really what would determine whether or not this contractor would actually want to take the bid,” she said.

But earlier this year, crews started the work to lay a foundation, Sifuentes said. A spokesman from the University of New Mexico told me in an email that the facility is slated to open in early 2027. Sifuentes said the construction employees onsite are under strict orders not to speak with anyone who asks questions about the project. “It’s very, very hush-hush,” Sifuentes said. “I don’t know what happened, if they reached out to a new group of contractors, but somebody definitely has taken the bid, and we are trying to figure out who it is.”

Many pro-life leaders from around the state say that the Las Cruces facility poses the greatest threat to unborn babies in New Mexico. On April 10, 18 pro-life leaders signed a formal agreement committing to work together to protect unborn babies, moving pro-life work in the state from a patchwork effort to a united front. In the post-Dobbs landscape of state abortion laws, New Mexico illustrates an opportunity and a challenge for pro-lifers. The state provides little to no protections for unborn babies and is one of several states that have become abortion destinations, as women travel in from neighboring pro-life states.

In 2022, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed an executive order directing the state to allocate funds for the abortion facility in Las Cruces. The next year, lawmakers set aside $10 million in taxpayer funding to build the Center for Reproductive Health.

“Not only would it provide abortions up to birth, it would also play a really big role in mass-producing future abortionists,” Sifuentes said. The University of New Mexico plans to send its medical students and residents to obtain their abortion training at the Las Cruces facility. Sifuentes says the training will be part of the national Ryan Residency Training Program, which works with OB-GYN residency programs across the country to teach students how to perform abortions. The Ryan program does partner with the University of New Mexico, but the program did not respond to WORLD’s requests to confirm if the Las Cruces facility would be part of its network.

Pro-lifers in other parts of the state are also concerned about the facility.

“We know that this is a strategic location for the governor to provide abortions to women from Texas and migrant women coming across the border,” said Dominique Davis, president and CEO of the Albuquerque-based Project Defending Life. Las Cruces is about 50 miles northwest of El Paso, Texas, where babies have been protected from abortion in nearly all cases since legislators passed a heartbeat law in 2021.

New Mexico does not protect unborn babies from abortion at any stage of pregnancy, and the state is one of the busiest destinations for out-of-state women who travel to obtain their abortion. Between 2020 and 2023, the year after the U.S. Supreme Court released its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the number of abortions performed in New Mexico more than tripled. Almost 14,000 women traveled from Texas to New Mexico for abortions in 2023 alone, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute.

Dealing with that onslaught, many local pro-life groups found themselves swamped with local work. “We have tried to unite on several fronts as a pro-life community in New Mexico for well over a decade,” Davis said. “We’re just so busy doing the work that we’re doing that it can be very hard to keep the communication going.”

While Texas is the largest source of out-of-state abortion travel into New Mexico, some women also come from pro-life Oklahoma. Last year, Gov. Lujan Grisham requested another $10 million to build an abortion facility like the one planned for Las Cruces in the northern part of the state. The Legislature approved that request as part of a funding bill in March 2025.

“We know that it’s going to be in our neck of the woods,” said Davis. As Davis and her team looked into the plans for the northern abortion facility, Sifuentes reached out for help contacting contractors in the region who were considering taking the bid in Las Cruces. As they talked, they recognized the need to work together as pro-life organizations to stop the looming threat.

Then Bennie Gonzales, a member of the Knights of Columbus in Santa Fe, gathered about a dozen pro-life leaders last month to discuss key challenges in the state. “We asked them what was the No. 1 threat right now,” Gonzales said. “And it was unanimous: all the people who were there said this construction in southern New Mexico.”

Gonzales said the discussion confirmed that pro-life groups and individuals in the state needed to work more closely together.

One month later, on April 10, the group reconvened in Albuquerque to sign the Spiritual Defense Coalition Unity Agreement. The binding document serves as a commitment for the members to pray together and collaborate to protect unborn babies. “We acknowledge that we stand at a moral crossroads,” the document reads. “We hereby bind together under the name of God—without malice or ill intent, with unity of purpose and all deference and humility toward the cause.”

The group plans to continue writing letters to contractors who may bid on the abortion facility projects. Its members also plan to share information about the facilities with their friends and neighbors, and Gonzales hopes to engage local religious communities, particularly bishops in the Roman Catholic church. “We want all of them to basically encourage the priests to speak from the pulpit to the parishioners and encourage them to take action,” he said.

As the coalition was taking shape, Gonzales said he learned about a similar effort that began in Iowa nearly a decade ago. In the early to mid-2000s, the now staunchly pro-life Hawkeye State had been just as pro-abortion as New Mexico, said Chuck Hurley, vice president and chief counsel at the Family Leader, a conservative nonprofit. “It was a dry desert for pro-lifers,” he said. “We began earnestly praying 36 years ago that God would send better rulers. And He has [sent] just wave after wave, particularly since 2016.”

But beyond battling pro-abortion lawmakers, another reason the state failed to pass pro-life legislation was due to infighting among pro-life activists, said Hurley.

In 2011, a bill to stop late-term abortions died after Hurley said pro-life groups failed to unite behind the effort. “The surface reasons were things like disagreements on strategy and tactics,” he said.

But in 2016, leaders began meeting to pray together. In early 2017 they signed a unity agreement that later became the foundation for the agreement signed in New Mexico. “We were off to the races, and the Legislature was much more inclined to work with the pro-life groups because we were unified, because we were done with our infighting,” Hurley said.

Now, Iowa protects babies after their heartbeats can be detected on an ultrasound, and the state’s Medicaid program does not fund abortion.

Hurley said there will always be differences of opinion within pro-life circles about how to protect babies and care for their mothers. But what worked in Iowa is what he hopes to see in New Mexico—a commitment to prayer, support for one another, and a focus on shared goals. He traveled to Albuquerque for the coalition’s April 10 meeting, and he signed its agreement, promising to continue supporting their work.

“They’re facing a Goliath right out of the gate with this gigantic abortion facility,” he said. “They’ll need to encourage one another and receive encouragement from outsiders.”

Davis with Project Defending Life believes the coalition will persevere. “I think this coalition has the opportunity to share the burden of a huge task that’s been given to us … and to take those steps to building a culture of life that not one organization can do alone,” she said.