Policy Change
Gender Affirming Care and Patient and Provider Protections
During the 2023 legislative session, BFNM worked alongside various partners and community leaders to secure the development and passage of both the “Reproductive Health Provider Protections” and “Reproductive and Gender Affirming Health Care Freedom Act”. BFNM supported this work through research, public education, and increased community engagement of Black, Indigenous, Latine, people of color and LGBTQ+ people. These necessary protections ensure that both patients and providers in the state of New Mexico can access and provide abortion care without intimidation, harassment, interference, or fear of out-of-state criminal or civil liability.
While we have led work over many years to protect and expand abortion care, this year BFNM fought to ensure that gender-affirming care was included in these protections. Adding gender-affirming care to these protections required an intense amount of public education for our community leaders, decision makers, partners and allies alike. It took incredible strength and resilience from our LGBTQ+ staff and community leaders to stand in strong support of these protections amidst hateful rhetoric, misinformation, and mounting restrictions and total bans targeting gender-affirming care across the country.
Additionally, BFNM was proud to work alongside long time partners at Equality New Mexico (EQNM) to expand the Human Rights Act in our state. Because of this incredible work, public entities are now covered by New Mexico’s Human Rights Act thus prohibiting tax-payer-funded discrimination of LGBTQ+ people. The language in the Human Rights Act has also been updated to ensure that the state’s nondiscrimination law clearly protects all queer and trans people from discrimination in every corner of New Mexico. Together, these critical protections send the message that New Mexico will continue to protect our communities from discrimination and politically-motivated outsider influence. It further solidifies that New Mexico is a state where we value our loved ones and neighbors through all of their decisions and across the spectrum of their identities.
Indian Family Protection Act
BFNM worked closely with Tribal leaders, legislators, Indigenous community members, impacted women and families, the NM Children, Youth & Families Department (CYFD), the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women (CSVANW), and the NM Tribal Indian Child Welfare Consortium (NMTIC), which includes Tribal ICWA social workers representing 23 tribes in NM to convene the Indian Family Protection Act Core Group. Together, this collaboration developed and led to the passage of the Indian Family Protection Act (IFPA) which was signed into law during the 2022 legislative session.
This work builds on the federal Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978. In 1978, the federal ICWA was passed in response to a horrifying number of Native children being removed from their families and communities. Though implementation and accountability has often been flawed, federal ICWA provides important minimum standards for Native children in the child welfare system. The state of Texas along with Indiana, Louisiana and individual plaintiffs are attempting to dismantle ICWA altogether. A decision in the Brackeen vs. Haaland case is expected by the Supreme Court in June of 2023.
Because of our collective work and the passage of IFPA, protections for Native children and families in the child welfare system are codified in New Mexico state law. The legislation uplifts tribal sovereignty and tribal self-determination by ensuring tribal communities are first in deciding how to care for their children in need, lessening the risk of them being taken away from their communities. We are now looking beyond IFPA at desperately needed child welfare reform in our state that is inclusive of all children and families who are subjected to the child welfare system.
Protecting and Expanding Abortion Care
In 2021 BFNM worked in collaboration with several trusted partners to repeal an antiquated abortion ban that was, until recently, still on the books in New Mexico. The development and passage of the “Repeal Abortion Ban” is the result of decades long efforts, research, place based organizing, culture shift, message development, relationship building, and communications work by Bold Futures staff and our community leaders, partners and allies. This movement to protect and expand a full spectrum of reproductive healthcare continues to be led by LGBTQ, Indigenous, Black, Latine and people of color, and has secured New Mexico as a safe haven state for abortion care in what is now a post-Roe landscape.
Contraception Access
Bold Futures NM is proud to have led advocacy and education efforts resulting in the passage of a pharmacy protocol that allows trained and licensed pharmacists in New Mexico to prescribe contraception. The protocol was passed by the Medical Board, Nursing Board, and Pharmacy Board and went into effect in June of 2017 and allows pharmacists to prescribe from a limited formulary of medications including hormonal contraception and emergency contraception.
BFNM also led advocacy and education efforts to further increase access to contraception through the passage of legislation requiring Insurance Coverage for Contraception (2019) which helps eliminate cost barriers for patients accessing contraception, and later Pharmaceutical Service Reimbursement Parity (2020) which allows pharmacists to be fairly paid for the time they spend in critical consultation with patients when prescribing contraception. Previously, there was no mechanism for pharmacists to bill for the time spent in a consultation with a client when prescribing contraception.