‘Taboo, but never dangerous’
For NM, geography — not laws — biggest barrier to abortion care
In the recovery room at Southwestern Women’s Options in Albuquerque last December, a nurse practitioner counseled a patient recovering from a procedural abortion. A Taos woman, who spoke to the Taos News on the condition of anonymity, was also recovering from a procedural abortion in the clinic’s recovery room. She could hear the subdued conversation nearby.
The doctor was advising the other patient that, should complications arise and the patient need to seek further medical care following a procedure, a physician would be unable to determine the difference between a procedural abortion and an unintended miscarriage. In other words, the patient would not face legal danger upon returning home to Texas, where abortions at all stages are banned or are tightly restricted.
The nurse asked whether the patient was staying in a hotel overnight; she wasn’t. Setting aside the hours to travel to Albuquerque for the procedure was time enough away from her home. Now, she needed to get a head start on the 800-plus-mile drive back across the state line.
“When I went there, I was mostly just thinking like, ‘Is this really happening to me?’,” the woman from Taos shared with the Taos News. “Hearing this woman in the chair next to me — it really put into perspective how fortunate I am to be able to access this thing that is illegal in so many states.”
Nationwide, bans on abortion access remain a topic of debate in many state courts — most recently in neighboring Arizona, where the Supreme Court attempted to revive an inactive 1864 law that banned nearly all abortions from the time of conception. After a strong outcry against the law, and after Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs approved its repeal in early May, the state Supreme Court approved a delay in enforcing the law Monday (May 13), reinstating policies that legalize abortion up to 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Nearly half of states currently uphold restrictive abortion care laws. Following the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision that overturned Roe V. Wade, nearby Texas and Oklahoma reinstated pre-Roe legal bans on abortions, some of the strictest in the nation.
At the federal level, the Supreme Court is determining whether politicians can serve jail sentences to doctors who provide abortion care for patients experiencing emergency pregnancy complications.
New Mexico, where abortion laws remain relatively generous, has become a refuge for women across the Southwest seeking an abortion.
Access in NM
The woman from Taos who visited Southwestern Women’s Options last year considers herself fortunate. She decided to keep her procedure private from family and friends — a decision motivated by her desire for confidentiality rather than fear of legal consequences. “I mean, it was a really emotionally loaded day, but basically I got up, I went to Albuquerque, I came home,” she said. “It felt taboo, but it never once felt dangerous.”
New Mexico does not have any of the major types of abortion restrictions commonly found in some of its neighboring states, such as restrictions based on gestational age, waiting periods, limitations on Medicaid-covered abortions or mandated parental involvement for those 18 and under. Qualified health care providers, not solely physicians, can perform abortions.
Following Dobbs, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham established that New Mexico would not cooperate with extradition attempts from other states, shielding providers and patients from out-of-state investigations and legal action.
As states pass stricter abortion laws, New Mexico has reaffirmed support for abortion care — and women across the Southwest have taken the state at its word.
Since the Dobbs decision, the number of abortions provided in New Mexico has swelled by 279 percent, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization that has collected data on abortion services since Roe v. Wade was enacted.
Particularly, the state has seen a huge increase in abortion-related travel: In 2023, roughly threefourths of women undergoing abortions in New Mexico came from out of state, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Andrea Gallegos, executive administrator of Alamo Women’s Clinic and Southwestern Women’s Options, both in Albuquerque, says the clinics serve mostly patients from Texas.
Pre-Dobbs, these operated in Texas and Oklahoma, but migrated to abortion-friendly states post-Dobbs. New Mexico made sense so they could continue providing care for existing patients in Texas. Working in an ever-shifting political landscape can feel stressful to Gallegos, but also motivates her work.
“I think it’s important that we still talk about it,” she said. “I think it’s important that people recognize how unfair it is that people have to flee their home state like medical refugees. I think everyone in health care should be outraged by that. We don’t ask anyone else to travel like this for any other type of care.”
While access remains open legally in-state, it appears lopsided geographically.
Privilege of geography
In the past few decades, the number of clinics offering abortion care in New Mexico has steadily decreased, shrinking from 26 in 1982 to seven in 2017.
Currently, four clinics in the state perform procedural abortions, all located in Albuquerque: Alamo Women’s Clinic, the UNM Center for Reproductive Health, Southwestern, Women’s Options, and Whole Women’s Health of New Mexico. Seven additional clinics in Santa Fe, Santa Teresa, Farmington, Las Cruces and Albuquerque provide medical abortions, or abortion pills taken at home, which telemedicine companies offer to people with a New Mexico mailing address. Private practices may also provide medical or procedural abortions.
With these 11 clinics concentrated in just four counties, over 80 percent of counties lack an abortion provider. Travel time and expenses, including time off work, gas, lodging and daycare, to access the nearest clinic — sometimes hundreds of miles away — have increasingly become barriers for women in and out of state seeking abortion care.
Geography is “probably the number one burden, in my opinion,” Gallegos said. “Geography has become a privilege in abortion access, no doubt.”
Gallegos noted the logistical difficulties of travel, which “disproportionately affects patients that already experience burdens like lower socioeconomic status, and unfortunately, affects pregnant people of color.”
The clinic can book patients as soon as a week out, but organizing time off work, driving routes, flights and hotels can be complicated on short notice. In some cases, patients have never traveled outside their home state before.
“The first thing I notice everyday with patients is just exhaustion. They walk in the door, and they’re exhausted,” Gallegos said. Exhaustion is quickly followed by gratitude, and often too by fear. “‘I live in a bad state, I’m traveling back home, is it OK? Is someone going to find out, am I going to get in trouble?’ You know, ‘What if something goes wrong when I get back home, what do I do?’ So there’s a lot of stress still.”
The woman from Taos didn’t face a 1,600-mile round trip, like the woman from Texas. But at 260 miles roundtrip, the procedure was no quick jaunt; driving time, a long day at the clinic and a stop for dinner meant she left Taos at 8 a.m. and didn’t return home until 8 p.m.
“[The nurse] asked me where I was coming from, and I said Taos, and she was like, ‘Oh, a local!’” the woman said. “I didn’t feel like traveling two-and-a-half hours to Albuquerque made me a local, but she said most women were coming from Texas, and seeing women from New Mexico was pretty rare.”
Reproductive care deserts
Still, not every county seeks to expand access to abortion care.
Post-Dobbs, several New Mexico counties declared themselves sanctuaries for the unborn and passed ordinances designed to block abortion clinics from operating in the city. In 2022, Hobbs city commissioners unanimously passed such an ordinance. In 2023, Edgewood town commissioners voted 4–1 in favor of an ordinance to block local providers from sending and receiving abortion pills through the mail, effectively banning abortion within the town’s limits.
Moreover, abortion care is one component of a broad spectrum of reproductive care that rural areas also often lack. Over half of New Mexico’s counties are considered maternity care deserts or low-access regions, according to the March of Dimes.
Taos has access to reproductive and maternal services via the Holy Cross Women’s Clinic and numerous midwifery clinics, but services are still primarily concentrated in Taos, leaving even more rural areas under-serviced. The Women’s Clinic did not respond for comment before this section went to press. New Life Pregnancy Center, a faith-based organization in Taos that offers support for unplanned pregnancies, declined to comment.
“The emphasis on the whole reproductive health spectrum has not been a priority in this country for quite a while,” Gallegos said. As she sees it, the broad spectrum of reproductive health care — like routine gynecological check ups, birth control access and maternal care — becomes more restricted in states where abortion care is limited. “It’s definitely all connected.”