New Mexico's $10 million taxpayer-funded abortion center in Las Cruces is almost finished.
The health system behind that center already has its next target.
A UNM executive admitted the location, and the state kept that plan hidden for months.
A UNM Executive Named Las Vegas, New Mexico as the Next Abortion Clinic Site
Christopher Arndt, the interim president and CEO of the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, said the quiet part out loud at a 2026 UNM Board of Regents meeting.
He told regents the state still has a $10 million appropriation from last year sitting unused.
That money, Arndt said, is earmarked for a "like-minded clinic" somewhere in northern New Mexico.
Arndt then named the location UNM and state officials had already settled on: Las Vegas, New Mexico, a small city built around two college campuses.
That single sentence is how the New Mexico Alliance for Life finally confirmed what state officials had worked for months to hide.
The group had filed Inspection of Public Records Act requests searching for exactly this information, and many of them came back denied or empty.
"It is no surprise the pro-abortion activists are targeting Las Vegas, New Mexico," said Elisa Martinez, Executive Director of the New Mexico Alliance for Life.
"With two college campuses and a central role in northern New Mexico, this community puts them within reach of young women facing unexpected pregnancies," Martinez said.
Records Requests Went Nowhere While the Las Cruces Abortion Clinic Kept Rising
This is not the first time New Mexico Democrats have tried to fund an abortion center without letting voters watch.
The Las Cruces facility exists today because Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham designated $10 million toward it back in 2022.
State Senator David Gallegos called the move "really tragic" at the time.
He warned it would turn New Mexico into what he called the abortion capital of the world.
NMAFL caught pro-abortion Democrats trying the same trick during the 2025 legislative session.
They slipped funding for a "reproductive health center in Northern New Mexico" into HB 450, the capital outlay bill.
Legislators got less than 24 hours of notice before the vote.
The House passed it 41 to 25, and the Senate passed it 25 to 16.
The 2026 version of the bill went further, authorizing the state to acquire property outright.
Construction on the Las Cruces facility kept moving the entire time.
A coalition of local pro-life groups turned to the only leverage they had left.
They built a public list of every contractor and supplier tied to the project, and asked churches and families across southern New Mexico to boycott every name on it.
Four major contractors have already walked off the Las Cruces job, according to organizers tracking the boycott.
The Same Contractor Boycott That Beat a Taxpayer-Funded Planned Parenthood in Texas
Southwest Coalition of Life did not invent this strategy.
They borrowed it from Austin, Texas, in 2003, when a boycott of more than 750 contractors and suppliers stopped a Planned Parenthood mega-clinic in its tracks.
That pressure campaign is already working in New Mexico.
Albuquerque contractor Samuel Burciaga walked off the Las Cruces job after daily phone calls from opponents made the situation unbearable, he said.
Las Vegas, New Mexico already has an answer for women facing an unexpected pregnancy, and it isn't UNM's.
Care Net of Las Vegas operates on 7th Street, offering free pregnancy tests, ultrasound referrals, and parenting help to any woman who walks in the door.
It does not perform abortions or refer women for them. It just helps mothers keep their babies.
UNM wants to plant a taxpayer-funded abortion center in that same small city, competing for the same young women Care Net already serves for free.
That is exactly why Las Vegas, New Mexico matters more than one city's zoning map.
Every dollar UNM spends chasing a second location is a dollar it now has to defend against the same boycotts, the same records requests, and the same parents who do not want an abortion center built where their daughters go to college.
New Mexicans are being asked to pray about it this week. NMAFL set Saturday, September 12, as a statewide day of prayer against the expansion, timed before UNM regents can quietly finalize a site.
The state can keep appropriating money in the dark.
It cannot keep hiding what that money is for.
Sources:
- Elisa Martinez, "New Mexico is Building Yet Another Tax-payer-Funded Abortion Center," LifeNews.com, September 10, 2026.
- "New Mexico Governor Designates $10M for State-Funded Abortion Facility," Live Action, August 31, 2022.
- "Help Stop the $10M Tax-Funded Abortion Center," Southwest Coalition of Life (stopthecenter.com), 2026.
- "Push to Stop Las Cruces Abortion Clinic Forces Some Businesses to Bow Out," Santa Fe New Mexican, 2026.
- "New Mexico Governor Pledges $10 Million New Abortion Clinic," Fox News, August 31, 2022.
- "Care Net of Las Vegas NM," Pregnancy Decision Line, accessed September 2026.
