How New Mexico Became a Sanctuary State for Health Care

"In May, 2022, when Politico published a leaked draft of the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, presaging the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Andrea Gallegos realized that she would probably have to move. Gallegos and her father ran Alamo Women's Reproductive Services, an abortion clinic in San Antonio, and Texas had a trigger law on the books which would ban abortion if Roe was overturned."

"In Texas, legislators had always seemed to be enacting new regulations aimed at making the clinic's work more difficult. "There were so many loopholes and unnecessary things that we had to overcome, that our patients had to overcome," Gallegos said: a mandatory twenty-four-hour waiting period; a requirement that patients had to view ultrasound images; a statement that providers had to read to patients which referred to the fetus as an "unborn baby.""

After the Dobbs leak and the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, Andrea Gallegos relocated abortion services from Texas to Albuquerque. Alamo Women's Reproductive Services opened an Albuquerque clinic in August 2022 to serve Texans fleeing restrictive laws. Texas imposed trigger bans and numerous regulatory hurdles including a twenty-four-hour waiting period, mandatory ultrasound viewing, and required scripted language referring to the fetus as an 'unborn baby.' New Mexico offered a friendlier regulatory climate, fewer protests, and protective policies. The state strengthened protections for gender-affirming care and established universal child care while abortion clinic numbers doubled, signaling a progressive policy orientation.

Read at The New Yorker