New Mexico is appealing directly to Texas (doctors) urging them to ditch the Lone Star State over abortion restrictions. . .The NM Department of Health ran full-page ads in five major Texas papers Sunday — including The Dallas Morning News — that featured a letter from Gov. Lujan Grisham referencing Texas’ abortion laws that are among the country’s strictest. “You took your oath with patients — not politicians — in mind,” Lujan Grisham said. "I also invite those of you who can no longer tolerate these restrictions to consider practicing next door in New Mexico.” Texas’ abortion legislation bans the procedure in all cases except to protect the life of the mother. Abortion is legal in New Mexico, which also has a so-called “shield law” to guard abortion providers from investigations by other states. . . The campaign cost around $400,000 and ran ads in the Austin-American Statesman, Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express-News and Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Billboards for the initiative popped up around the Texas Medical Center in Houston two weeks ago. . .
While ardent pro-choice advocates will approve of the ads, others are questioning why the state is not aggressively pursuing professionals from out of state who are desperately needed in areas where we rank last in the nation.
--First and foremost would be the Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD), devastated by a lack of social workers needed to protect the state's many abused children and afflicted with terrible morale by those still working in the dysfunctional agency. How about advertising to attract out of state expertise to attack our abominable record when it comes to the criminal abuse of children already born and living among us?
According to CYFD data, vacancies in the department's Protective Services Division were around 23% as of May, two percentage points higher than in May 2023.
--Then there is the huge shortage of providers for home visiting programs that are key to preventing child abuse, even though the state has appropriated fresh millions to develop such programs. It's a shortage that cries out for a national search:
Citing a report from the federal Administration for Children and Families, LFC analysts said New Mexico’s rate of child maltreatment per 1,000 children was 12.7 in 2022, compared to a national rate of 7.7. Home visiting programs, considered a key to lowering rates of child maltreatment, aren’t reaching nearly as many children as officials with the state’s early childhood agency had hoped. Analysts found just 6% of children under the age of 5 were receiving the services — far below the Early Childhood Education and Care Department’s goal of about 50%.
--Then there is the shortage of ABQ police officers and the cultural rot at APD as evidenced by the historic DWI bribery scandal and the revelations of continued rampant racism in the department. Could national recruitment, including newspaper ads, give the city a shot at building a new and improved APD with officers not infected by the moral disease that has settled into the agency dominated by locals?
Mayor Tim Keller said he’s given up hope of hitting the longstanding goal of having 1,200 officers. The department is switching gears, according to the mayor, by narrowing officer tasks and relying on civilians and technology to fill in the gaps.
A group of Albuquerque police officers laughed as they threw around
racial slurs — calling Native Americans “savages” — and disparaged the
man they just killed as a “honky” with “a weird accent,” expressing
relief that the man wasn’t Black “because of the optics.”
--Then there's the severe shortage of primary care doctors throughout the state? Couldn't newspaper ads target that serious need instead of abortion doctors to perform a procedure that is already available to all New Mexicans?
According to a recent Legislative Finance Committee report presented to state lawmakers, healthcare workers were the top occupational need of 28 New Mexico counties in 2023. Based on latest data from 2021, only seven of the state’s 33 counties were at or above the benchmark of 8.5 primary care practitioners per 10,000 people.
--Don't forget the state teacher shortage. A state Department of Education report said there were 721 vacancies here in that profession in 2023.
The educator workforce is in crisis and New Mexico’s vacancy rates remain high; Underprepared and unsupported teachers leave the profession' A shortage of quality educators harms students, teachers and the public education system as a whole; the educator workforce crisis has negative impacts on all students, but especially those named in the Martinez v. Yazzie lawsuit
Abortion is legal here and the administration has the prerogative to advocate for abortion tourism by encouraging women to have the procedure and to recruit out of state abortion providers.
But prioritizing that misses the mark by a mile, as seen in today's list of essential recruitment efforts needed to turn around this state's pathetic last in the nation standing in so many critical quality of life indicators.
You can put that in a newspaper ad, on a billboard or shout it from the roof of the Roundhouse.
TEXAS REACTION
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| Gov. Abbott |
People and businesses vote with their feet, and continually they are choosing to move to Texas more than any other state in the country. Governor Lujan Grisham should focus on her state's rapidly declining population instead of political stunts.
New Mexico's population has been in a nearly no growth mode for over a decade but not "rapidly declining." Texas, of course, is booming in both business and population.
As for this being a political stunt, well, even Texas gets it right once in a while
NO ELECTION CHANGE
The Albuquerque City Council last night failed to override Mayor Keller’s veto of proposed election changes passed by the Council so there will be no changes.
In June, six city councilors voted to ask voters to eliminate runoff elections for city council and mayoral elections. But last night only five of those councilors voted to override the Keller veto, one vote short, so no proposed changes to city election laws will appear on the November ballot.
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