Having spent the first 30-odd years of my life in New Jersey, there was one tradition I always remember needing to carry out before the major summer holidays: crossing over the state line into Pennsylvania to buy fireworks.
Since the Garden State makes most fireworks illegal — ostensibly to protect anyone from getting injured or killed — a day or two before July 4, Memorial Day or Labor Day, someone would need to drive into Pennsylvania. There, numerous stores selling all sorts of pyrotechnics just happened to be right across the bridge over the Delaware River after you’d crossed into the Keystone State. It’s almost like they knew what we were doing!
Call it immoral profiteering, call it upholding the freedom of choice against meddling nanny-state bureaucrats, but I don’t know anyone who was hurt in the slightest — much less killed — by any backyard fireworks display I attended or heard about. This is up to and including the genius who somehow procured a police-issue flash-bang grenade for one Independence Day celebration and lobbed it into the forest. (They don’t sell those in Pennsylvania.)
I bring this up because, earlier this summer, Texas banned an activity with a far higher rate of injury or death. In fact, the death rate runs at nearly a solid 100 percent — and that’s if everything goes right. Banning such an activity should sound like the right and proper purview of government to everyone. Yet, New Mexico seems intent on spending $10 million to allow Lone Star State residents to come right across the state line and keep the killing going.
Provided, of course, it’s only the unborn that they’re killing.
On Wednesday, New Mexico Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed an executive order earmarking $10 million for an abortion clinic in a county that borders Texas. In addition, the governor’s office said via a media release that the state Department of Health must “develop a detailed plan to leverage resources to expand abortion access in rural and underserved parts of the state.”
According to the governor’s office, this was solely to increase clinic access for the people of rural New Mexico.
“The executive order designates $10 million of the governor’s capital outlay funds for the development of a reproductive health care clinic in Doña Ana County, aimed at fortifying and expanding New Mexicans’ access to the full spectrum of reproductive health care, including regular preventative care, family planning, prenatal care, labor and delivery, postpartum care and support, lactation counseling and support, abortion, and appropriate medical management of miscarriage and pregnancy loss,” the release read.
Do you think Democrats are obsessed with abortion?
Right. And all those Pennsylvania fireworks stores were clustered close to the small-town communities over the Delaware River from New Jersey because everyone there loves things that go boom-crackle-sparkle so much. They can totally support three pyrotechnics stores right off the interstate all on their own.
The Washington Post was more honest about what the intent was with its headline: “N.M. plans $10M abortion clinic near Tex. border, expecting post-Roe demand.”
If you read between the lines of the pull-quote used by Gov. Lujan Grisham in the media release, she was, too — albeit in a more cagey way.
“As more states move to restrict and prohibit access to reproductive care, New Mexico will continue to not only protect access to abortion, but to expand and strengthen reproductive health care throughout the state,” said Lujan Grisham in the release.
“Today, I reaffirm my resolve to make sure that women and families in New Mexico – and beyond – are supported at every step of the way.”
As more states move to restrict and prohibit access to reproductive care, New Mexico will continue to not only protect access to abortion, but expand and strengthen reproductive health care throughout the state.https://t.co/4iR6XpLAqa
— Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (@GovMLG) September 2, 2022
Yes, “and beyond.” Nudge nudge. If you know, you know. The rest of those quoted in the release were still trying, meanwhile, to affect a sheen of plausible deniability.
“The southern part of New Mexico has lacked access to the full spectrum of reproductive healthcare for generations. Directing money to help our southern New Mexico families is critical for patient care,” said Kayla Herring, director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains. “Expanding access to abortion care is expanding access to the full spectrum of reproductive healthcare.”
“Our governor is a public health champion who understands that abortion care is health care,” said New Mexico Democrat Rep. Joanne Ferrary, according to the governor’s news release. “We want to thank her for allocating money to southern New Mexico, which has great need for these services.”
It’s almost if these people believe New Mexicans can’t read a map of their own state.
As Madeline Leesman reported in a Thursday article for Townhall, Lujan Grisham isn’t alone in the obsession with spending her state’s money to ensure people from other states can kill their unborn children.
“In June, the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision paved the way for several pro-life states to pass trigger laws protecting the unborn. Many abortion clinics in red states have gone out of business. States like New Mexico and California are preparing for a spike in abortions as a result,” she wrote.
“This week, reports broke that California lawmakers are preparing to spend $20 million to help pregnant women travel from pro-life states to get abortions as part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) plan to boost the state’s ‘abortion infrastructure.’”
Say what you will about the oleaginous, stoat-like Newsom or the preposterous phrase “abortion infrastructure;” at least he owns what he’s spending his constituents’ money on trying to accomplish. Lujan Grisham is earmarking $10 million to establish an abortion clinic for Texans and has the temerity to pass it off as health-care spending for rural state residents.
She’d have better luck, in fact, trying to pass it off as a state-run store for special fireworks that are illegal in Texas because they kill unborn children 100 percent of the time.
It’s as much of a falsehood as saying the executive order is “aimed at fortifying and expanding New Mexicans’ access to the full spectrum of reproductive health care,” and at least that lie would have the dignity of not trying to hide behind constituent health-care spending as an excuse for a clinic which does little more than provide abortions for Texans on New Mexico’s dime.
