State breaks ground on Doña Ana County reproductive health center

Political leaders and representatives from advocacy organizations break ground in Las Cruces for the Center for Reproductive Health Sept. 5, 2024. (Photo by Leah Romero / Source New Mexico)

LAS CRUCES — State, local leaders and advocates gathered Thursday to break ground on a state funded reproductive health clinic in Doña Ana County. 

The Center for Reproductive Health will be located on East Lohman Avenue and support people across the larger county and border area with medication and procedural abortion, contraception options, pregnancy loss support and management, preventative care, lactation support and doula support among several other services.

“This should be the beginning of creating a primary care infrastructure dedicated to women and their families in New Mexico,” Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said.

The state announced the chosen location about four months ago after a year of work done largely behind the scenes. The UNM Board of Regents approved the acquisition of land during a meeting in May.

Michael Richards, interim executive vice president of UNM Health Sciences and CEO of the UNM Health System, said Thursday that Lujan Grisham gave the planning team “clear marching orders” to have a groundbreaking this summer.

Richards said the health center will be approximately 8,000 square feet with the capacity to treat thousands of women each year. 

“We are breaking ground on a clinic that will provide essential and comprehensive reproductive health services, services which are not adequately available right now,” he said.

Richards said the building plans will be finalized in the next weeks with the architect and a contractor will be chosen to lead the project. Construction will follow and take an estimated 18 months to complete.

“Or sooner,” Lujan Grisham piped in, suggesting the building could be complete in closer to 12 months.

Origins of the clinic

Lujan Grisham pledged $10 million in capital outlay funds to the clinic in 2022 which the legislature appropriated several months later. The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center has led the charge as the project’s primary fiscal agent along with advocacy organizations Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, Bold Futures and Strong Families New Mexico.

The project started to meet a growing need for reproductive health care and abortion services in New Mexico and surrounding states. Doña Ana County was chosen for its proximity to Texas and rural New Mexican communities.

“For many women in Southern New Mexico, if you needed this type of health care you’d often be forced to make long drives. Three, four hour drives. Let’s face it, that’s not an easy option for many families when you have responsibilities for children, when you have the cost of transportation, when you have the potential of having to stay overnight, or the impact of a family for a day of lost work. Having these services local makes a difference,” Richards said.

Congressman Gabe Vasquez (D-New Mexico) emphasized the importance of healthcare access particularly in rural and tribal areas of the state, which the new clinic will take steps toward addressing.

“New Mexico has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country. This tragic statistic highlights the deep disparities in healthcare access, especially for women in underserved communities,” Vasquez said. “Too many mothers in New Mexico are losing their lives to preventable complications due to inadequate access to prenatal care, emergency services and comprehensive mental health support. This is unacceptable.”

Moving forward

Richards explained that the project is moving into the “design phase” and the team will be looking to Planned Parenthood and the UNM Center for Reproductive Health as models. He said building a clinic in a year to 18 months “sounds like a long time” but is actually quite fast for such a project.

Eve Espey, chair of the Department of OB/GYN at the UNM Health Sciences Center, speaks in Las Cruces at the groundbreaking of the Center for Reproductive Health Sept. 5, 2024.Eve Espey, chair of the Department of OB/GYN at the UNM Health Sciences Center, added that UNM will send a provider to the Planned Parenthood location in Las Cruces in the next few months to introduce procedural abortion and possibly expand contraceptive options.

“Planned Parenthood now has a very limited, mostly medication abortion presence,” Espey said. 

Once the Center for Reproductive Health opens in Las Cruces, those procedures will become part of the clinic, she said.

Espey also noted that the clinic will continue to be informed by a community advisory board throughout the construction and operating phases. It will also have the academic component of training medical and nursing students, she said, while also creating space for research.

“That’s what is, I think, going to be very unique about this clinic, is that it will bring together perspectives that rarely actually work together,” Espey said. “That, I think, is maybe the thing I’m most excited about with this center.”