New Mexico group creates haven for Texas abortion seekers
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — If there is a silent witness to the effects of Texas’ abortion law, it’s a cozy and sterile room in an old office building in downtown Albuquerque.
The hospitality suite at the New Mexico Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice is somewhere between a spa waiting area and a makeshift medical tent. Four cots with pillows in paper cases and eye masks wrapped in cellophane wait, ready for the next group of Texas abortion seekers.
It’s a world of Joan Lamunyon Sanford’s making, where abortion is spoken about loudly and matter-of-factly. The 63-year-old executive director of the reproductive rights nonprofit said it contrasts doctors’ offices across the Texas border where the procedure is mentioned in hushed tones, if at all.
Large sheets of grid paper titled “Messages for future travelers” shout words of encouragement written with different colored markers.
“Do not feel ashamed because you made a choice for your life,” one client wrote. “Just know you are not alone.”
One morning every week, up to 10 people board a flight from Dallas to Albuquerque to terminate their pregnancies in a state where abortion is still legal. They’re driven to their appointments in shifts before returning to the nonprofit’s offices for a couple of hours of rest before their flight home that evening.
Like other states that have doubled down on abortion protections post-roe, New Mexico has become a haven for patients from nearby states with restrictions or bans, including Texas and Oklahoma. The women find the abortion programs through news coverage, Texas abortion funds or by word-of-mouth, but the process is often shrouded in mystery.
After Texas lawmakers passed abortion restrictions in 2021 and the Supreme Court overturned the abortion protections of Roe vs. Wade in 2022, the New Mexico Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice pivoted its model and staffed up. The organization supported 953 Texans in 2023. It saw 22 New Mexico residents in the same period.
The Dallas Morning News visited the Albuquerque operation but was unable to speak with any of the women who passed through the gates of the nearby abortion clinic. The trip out-of-state can be marked by fear and uncertainty, both for potential legal repercussions and social fallout. Lamunyon Sanford and her staff are fiercely protective of the passengers entrusted to their care.
The logistics of multi-day travel are unfeasible for people who can’t afford to miss work or find overnight childcare. The same-day flight model is born out of desperation, Lamunyon Sanford said.
New Mexico Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, in partnership with the First Unitarian Church of Dallas, needed a solution that prioritized convenience without becoming impersonal, one that balanced the needs of individual travelers with rapid-pace appointments bookended by flights across state lines. The trip is free of cost for travelers and comes with no financial or need-based prerequisites.
Across the hall from the hospitality suite is a men’s bathroom, the only one on the floor. It’s a relic of a time when women couldn’t work in the offices where travelers now recover. Lamunyon Sanford put a fake plant in the urinal.
“It’s like sleepover vibes,” said program director Brittany Defeo, 34.
The activists have a standing group flight reservation each week; names of fliers are needed only 72 hours in advance. More often than not, the tickets are claimed within days of a trip, mostly by Texans within driving distance of Dallas. Every seat is filled.
THE MAKING OF AN ABORTION RIGHTS ACTIVIST
Lamunyon Sanford never heard her mother call herself a feminist, but she kept both her birth name and her married name on her nursing license. It set the tone for Lamunyon Sanford’s childhood. “That was unusual in the late ’50s and early ’60s for women to keep their birth name,” she said.
Lamunyon Sanford grew up in Albuquerque attending a United Methodist church with her parents and two younger siblings. She stopped going to regular services when she went to college. When she moved to Gallup, New Mexico, she found community in monthly women’s circles hosted by the local church. The habit stuck when they returned to Albuquerque in the late 1980s, even though she later left the United Methodist Church. It was there, in a United Methodist church downtown, that Lamunyon Sanford encountered the New Mexico Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, founded in 1978, which would eventually become NMRCRC.
Lamunyon Sanford signed up as a phone banking volunteer while working her job as a physical education teacher. She joined the board of directors and eventually decreased her teaching gig to part time so she could keep her benefits and spend more time with the abortion rights organization.
Working out of her den, Lamunyon Sanford organized clergy and lay volunteers to escort people to and from Planned Parenthood for abortion care. A retired Presbyterian clergy member called, saying a couple of patients needed to stay overnight. Lamunyon Sanford found places for them to sleep, the beginning of their practical support program.
In 2023, the group spent nearly $400,000 supporting women traveling to and from their abortions in New Mexico.
Most of the organization’s clients in the early and mid2000s were from New Mexico, although the number of people who sought their services was small because New Mexico’s Medicaid program covers the cost of abortions and related travel. NMRCRC sources its funding through a mix of donations and grants.
In 2009, Dr. George Tiller was fatally shot by an anti-abortion extremist at a church nearly 600 miles away in Wichita, Kansas. The doctor was one of the few who performed lateterm abortions. Albuquerque clinic Southwestern Women’s Options brought on two of Tiller’s former colleagues a year later to provide abortions in all trimesters, making it one of a handful of clinics in the country that offered such a procedure. “Now, Southwestern Women’s Options had people coming from all over the country,” Lamunyon Sanford said.
“And sometimes out of the country,” Defeo added.
The clinic settled a wrongful death lawsuit for $900,000 in 2021 after a woman died in a multiday outpatient process.
Between the influx of patients and a failed 2013 Albuquerque referendum to institute an abortion ban after 20 weeks of pregnancy, abortion rights groups captured national attention and a swell of funding. New Mexico Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, of which Lamunyon Sanford was still the only fulltime employee, could finally afford to expand.
CROSS-STATE PARTNERS
On Sept. 1, 2021, the Southwestern Women’s Surgery Center in Dallas saw its patient count plummet from a new Texas law that banned abortion after six weeks. Southwestern Women’s Options in Albuquerque is the sister site to Southwestern Women’s Surgery Center. It’s nearly a 10-hour drive from downtown Dallas, even farther for patients coming from the city’s eastern suburbs. But it’s two hours by plane.
The First Unitarian Church of Dallas has become one of the strongest abortion rights advocates in the region, with ties to the movement pre-dating the Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973.
The Albuquerque clinic connected patients with the flight program. First Unitarian’s chaplains shepherded them to the airport for the group flight, while Lamunyon Sanford’s team met the Texans when they landed.
The Rev. Daniel Kanter, senior minister and CEO of First Unitarian Church of Dallas, his church and the group in New Mexico fill the role of information provider previously found in Texas OB-GYN offices. Health care workers don’t always know whether they’re allowed under Texas law to share information about abortion, said Kari White, executive and scientific director at Resound Research for Reproductive Health.
The Texas-new Mexico partnership made changes in response to threats from anti-abortion activists and the shifting legal landscape.
Groups of 20 travelers every two weeks eventually became weekly flights with groups of 10 — the smallest number of travelers that qualify for the group ticket discount. The smaller group was less conspicuous.