Albuquerque Votes Against Banning Abortion After 20 Weeks

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New York Times – 11/20/2013

Albuquerque Voters Defeat Anti-Abortion Measure
By Fernanda Santos

ALBUQUERQUE -- Voters here on Tuesday defeated a ballot question that sought to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, delivering a critical setback on an anti-abortion movement that had sought to use this progressive city to recalibrate the national debate around women’s reproductive rights.

The referendum, the first of its kind in the country for a municipality, was marked by record turnout and aggressive tactics by volunteers on both sides, who sought to capitalize on the controversy and passion surrounding the issue to drive voters to the polls. For political strategists, it also offered a chance to test the way their message on abortion resonated among Hispanics, a key constituency that accounts for nearly half of the residents in Albuquerque and New Mexico, and is one of the fastest-growing populations in the country.

“This was a clear counterpunch to the Republicans and right-wingers who came from out of state to push their agenda on us,” Sam Bregman, chairman of the New Mexico Democratic Party, which campaigned hard against the ban, said in an interview.

According to the city clerk’s office, about 87,000 votes were cast in the election, or 25 percent of Albuquerque’s registered voters. The final tally was 55 percent of votes against and 45 percent of votes for the abortion ban.

The ban would have affected the entire state, given that the only two clinics that perform abortion at that stage in the pregnancy are in Albuquerque. One, Southwestern Women’s Options, is perhaps one of the only in the country to openly admit it does abortions after 20 weeks; out-of-state license plates can often be spotted in its parking lot.

Tara Shaver, 29, a self-described Christian missionary from Kansas who spearheaded the push to get the question on the ballot, said that regardless of the defeat, “We’ll walk away with thousands of people educated about what abortion is.”

The referendum gave conservative religious groups a chance to test their strategy of bringing the abortion fight from states to municipalities. They have successfully pushed for changes in zoning and for other rules that close abortion clinics or keep them from opening. Virginia’s busiest clinic, in Fairfax, closed in July after the city denied it a permit, citing inadequate parking under a recently amended ordinance.

Here, the groups used churches and neighborhood organizations to drum up support among voters. On Tuesday, a group prayed outside Bibles Plus, a Christian bookstore, and carried signs with pictures of aborted fetuses outside the Albuquerque Museum, a polling site, startling children on a field trip.

“Yes, we are radical — radical in our love, in our protecting,” said Grace Lardizabal, pastor at Transformation Ministries, a Christian nondenominational church in Albuquerque, holding her daughter, 6, outside the bookstore. “We believe it’s our mission to save lives.”

Organizers made a robust attempt to turn out Hispanics amid tug-of-war efforts to determine whether the long-held belief that they are conservative on social issues would hold true.

“There’s not a model anywhere in the country to help us figure out whether a Catholic Hispanic woman thinks that an abortion ban that makes no exception for rape or incest has gone too far,” said Pat Davis, the executive director of ProgressNow New Mexico, a grass-roots advocacy group. That, he said, “could be one of the big takeaways of this vote.”

So far, 12 states have enacted bans on abortion at 18 or 20 weeks after conception, based on the notion that the fetus feels pain at that point. That argument, while the subject of debate among scientists, is widely regarded as the driving force behind a more general effort to limit abortion options.

The bans have been suspended in three states — Arizona, Georgia and Idaho — where courts have found them to be too restrictive or unconstitutional. (Arizona is the only one among the 12 to have prohibited abortions at 18 weeks.)

Forty years ago, in Roe v. Wade, the United States Supreme Court legalized abortions until fetuses could survive outside the womb, which doctors say is around 24 weeks. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, nine out of 10 abortions happen in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Abortion opponents are nonetheless undeterred; they have found a solid measure of support among politicians and voters.

Here, the campaigns were pushed into overdrive by a last-minute infusion of money from national groups from both sides, like Planned Parenthood and the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion political action committee in Washington. Combined, the ban’s opponents and proponents raised roughly $1 million, covering the costs of television ads and ground operations of unprecedented reach and size in this city.

The Democratic National Committee sent emails and members of the Columbia University College Democrats made phone calls, prodding voters to cast ballots against the ban. Volunteers flooded several neighborhoods before sunrise, leaving leaflets outside homes. A trolley shuttled students from the University of New Mexico campus to polling places all day.

Eli Wilson, 20, a sophomore majoring in English and philosophy, who delayed a trip to the library to board a trolley, said, “I believe women have the right to have an abortion if they choose to, so I’m voting against it.”

Sharon Shero, 63, who described herself as a “devout Christian,” voted early, then gave some of her friends rides to the polls “to get the vote out for the protection of the unborn,” she said.

Albuquerque’s record for the number of votes in a municipal election was broken during the early-voting period, which ended Friday, and the total cast on Tuesday surpassed that of the mayoral election last month by 17,000, according to the city clerk’s office.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 20, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the name of a clinic in Albuquerque that openly performs abortions after the 20th week of gestation. It is Southwestern Women’s Options, not Southwest Women’s.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 20, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the rate of abortions and the time period in which they occur, according to the research group Guttmacher Institute. Nine out of 10 abortions happen in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, not four out of five before 21 weeks.