Less than a week after the New Mexico Legislature’s opening day, lawmakers will begin debating what could be one of the most controversial measures of the 60-day session: the proposed repeal of a 1969 law that makes it a crime to perform an abortion in the state.

The statute has been unenforceable since the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade. But women’s rights advocates and others worry the high court could overturn or weaken that decision — in which justices found overly restrictive state government regulations of abortion unconstitutional — with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett taking a seat on the bench in October.

Coney Barrett, the nine-member court’s sixth conservative, replaced progressive icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September.



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