Marker: New Mexico Moms Need Delivery Rooms, Not Another Abortion Clinic

LAS VEGAS, N.M. — Republican U.S. Senate candidate Larry Marker today called on state leaders to redirect the $10 million taxpayer appropriation set aside for a northern New Mexico abortion clinic toward restoring labor and delivery care in rural communities like Las Vegas. Expectant mothers there have had no hospital delivery unit since 2022.

“In Las Vegas, a woman in labor has to get in the car and drive to Santa Fe to have her baby,” Marker said. “One in three New Mexico counties is now a maternity care desert. And Santa Fe’s answer is a second $10 million abortion clinic. New Mexicans need healthcare, not ideology.”

Alta Vista Regional Hospital closed its delivery unit in 2016, reopened it, then shut it down for good in 2022. Hospitals in Gallup and Artesia have also closed their birthing units. Nearly 18 percent of New Mexico women now live more than 30 minutes from a birthing hospital, almost double the national rate.

Meanwhile, the state is building a $10 million taxpayer-funded abortion clinic in Las Cruces. In 2025, the Legislature approved a second $10 million for a clinic in northern New Mexico. This month, the University of New Mexico confirmed that buying Alta Vista was “one possibility” it considered to meet the terms of that appropriation. UNM has since let the deal lapse, but the money remains, and the state still won’t say where the clinic is going.

“They looked at the only hospital in San Miguel County and saw an opportunity for abortion, not a delivery room,” Marker said.

Marker also pointed to Senator Ben Ray Luján, who has represented New Mexicans in Congress or the Senate for nearly two decades.

“Las Vegas lost its delivery room twice on Ben Ray Luján’s watch,” Marker said. “Rural hospitals are closing birthing units because federal Medicaid payments don’t cover the cost of keeping them open. Where has he been?”

As senator, Marker said he will fight to fix Medicaid’s bundled payment so rural clinics are paid fairly for prenatal care, and support rural hospital payment reform that keeps labor and delivery units open.

“Every mother in New Mexico deserves a safe place to deliver her baby close to home,” Marker said. “Not a two-hour round trip, and not a government that thinks the answer to an empty delivery room is an abortion clinic.”

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