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Separate attacks on an Albuquerque medical office and Planned Parenthood facility in recent weeks might lead you to believe tension over abortion has boiled over in just a few days.

But the simmer, particularly in the political arena, is always there, says Heather Brewer, the state executive director of NARAL, a political arm of the abortion-rights movement.

"This year is the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and we're still fighting," says Brewer. "I don't see any detente around the corner."

A quick prediction for 2008: The abortion debate, here and around the nation, will be coming to front pages near you - and not just when people decide to attack abortion clinics.

The abortion-rights community, fretting over changes in the Supreme Court in recent years, is clearly gearing up for state-by-state, law-by-law battles over the issue.

Brewer won't outline initiatives advocates may push in the 2008 legislative session and beyond, but next November's elections are clearly a target.

Here's why: Although Democrats have a strangehold on state government - and abortion rights supporters in Gov. Bill Richardson and Lt. Gov. Diane Denish - there are still no sure things when it comes to the abortion debate.

Brewer's example is the state Senate, where only 15 of 42 members can be considered dependable votes. That means there's much work to be done - on both sides of the issue - in a year when every Senate seat is up for grabs.

Her other example is what she calls "gradations" of the issue. Some politicians' stances are easily gleaned, but others fall this way and that, depending on the issues that come under the abortion tent. Access to contraception? HPV vaccine? Birth control?

"Every issue," she says, "is a new issue."

Engaging, smart, determined, Brewer says she looks forward to the debates that will come. A political pro from Glen Burnie, Md., she came to New Mexico to get away from politics. And she did for a while, waiting tables in Santa Fe and even teaching for a year at Capshaw Junior High School.

But politics has that "Godfather III" seduction to it - the more you try to get out, the more it pulls you back in.

So Brewer got in again - helping with Eric Griego's run for mayor in 2005 against, among others, Martin Chavez, and becoming Patricia Madrid's spokeswoman during the 2006 battle royale with U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson.

Survive those two bruisers and you're good to go on the politics of abortion.

Brewer says she knows this won't be an easy fight. Not next month. Not next year.

But she's also careful not to blur the lines, particularly as they apply to the recent attacks in Albuquerque.

The violence, she suggests, speaks for itself, and making political hay out of someone's misfortune is not only in bad taste, but it can also be construed as bad politics.

"What we do, politically, is look for strategic values," she says. "None of us wants violence against a co-worker to give us a strategic advantage."