IT’S BEEN TWO YEARS since the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs decision, allowing many states to outlaw abortion within their borders. Some of the states with the harshest bans are neighbors to New Mexico.
The Guttmacher Institute published a research paper recently that documented 14,000 Texas women traveled to New Mexico in 2023 to receive reproductive medical care. A wave of women now look to our state as a refuge from their own governments.
None of this is new to Franz Theard. A doctor in the twilight of his career, for decades he ran an OB/GYN practice in El Paso; but years ago he saw what was coming and relocated his office just across the Rio Grande into New Mexico. From this legal sanctuary, he continues to offer abortion care to women, most of them from Texas. These days he works with his daughter Gabi, who runs the business side of the practice. Together, this father-daughter team are undaunted by the noise from across the border.
Franz, you’re a doctor, you have a medical degree, and you chose to be on the front lines of the abortion issue.
Franz: I initially went into OB/GYN. I’ve always wanted to help women. When I trained in Washington DC, when Roe vs. Wade was just established. The chief of the department had his own abortion clinic on the floor. It was part of our training. And then I went to the Army, to the 97th General Hospital in Frankfurt, Germany. There were 10 of us. There was the Hyde Amendment — you could not do abortion in a federal facility, but there was an exception for overseas military soldiers.
They would fly people, soldiers, from the Middle East or wherever. They would come to the 97th General every Tuesday and five of us volunteered to do it. Every fifth Tuesday, you’d be assigned. We’d do 20 or 30 young soldiers who got pregnant. I saw the need. Sometimes I wonder, yeah, it’d be nice to be a guy who is famous doing infertility and that sort of thing. But there was a need.
I wasn’t trying to get famous or anything. It created some issues professionally. But I stood my ground.
How did you end up in this bottom corner of New Mexico?
Franz: After the US Army, I came to El Paso for maternal fetal medicine, a high-risk pregnancy fellowship, and opened my private practice in 1983. We were initially doing very well, but over time, things became more and more difficult. When I started my private practice, I thought like I was in Washington DC. I mean in DC, as an OB/GYN, you’d do infertility, you’d do abortion, it was all part of healthcare. Not in El Paso. So, in 2005, we opened the clinic in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. We are less than a mile from El Paso.
I was specifically told I was crazy to do this. I lost some friends. I may have lost my first wife because of the stress on the family. Our house got picketed every day. The kids had to get shuttered in and everything. My kids both went to Catholic school and I was stupid, you know, but after a while I found out my son used to get beat up. We paid a price. But I felt that I was doing something important.
Gabi: Since I was little, I knew that he was doing something very important, even if I didn’t fully understand the concept. I remember having a brick thrown through my window and it didn’t phase me, it didn’t upset me. I just remember it made me very angry because it woke me up from my nap. But it was that moment that I knew, oh, he does something important, one day I’ll understand what it is.
In New Mexico, the Republicans and Democrats really leave each other alone. As long as they have the right to bear arms and we have the right to weed and abortion, it’s all good. Nobody gets in each other’s business and it’s very peaceful. I’ve been in Texas, which is very red, or New York, which is very blue, nothing in between. It’s enlightening to see a state able to be both.
Franz: New Mexico has been a wonderful experience. The influence of Texas is huge, so we service the patients as much as we can. We follow the law. Today we had eight or nine patients. I think two were local. The other ones were from Midland-Odessa and a lot of them were from San Antonio, Houston, Waco.
I personally had to change my residence. I was threatened. I thought, look you’re Texas person if you have a Texas driver’s license. So now I have a house in New Mexico. That’s my residence. The state of Texas, Abbott, hopefully, cannot touch me. I don’t have a homestead in El Paso anymore. My homestead is in New Mexico.
But we can still be sued. There’s a lawsuit filed against me from some dude in Abilene, Texas. I haven’t heard much more, but I had to go to a very nice outfit called the Center for Reproductive Rights. They advised me not to panic. It’s been two and a half years. I haven’t heard anything.
Are patients going to be liable? I tell everybody here, never never admit to your OB/GYN, to anybody that you had an abortion. Don’t put it in your record.
Dobbs v. Jackson removed constitutional protection for access to abortion in 2022. How did your practice change?
Gabi: I was in Austin, before anything was overturned. They were putting bounties on people found driving people to and from clinics. Then I blinked and it was overturned and I was feeling like there was change in the air, and not particularly inviting change. As soon as Roe was overturned, I called a clinic up and said, Do you guys need any kind of help? We had 40 patients a day. Forty between 8:00 AM and 12:00 PM.
When I started here, patients asked over and over, Is this legal? Am I allowed to be here? Am I allowed to do this? So, I’m educating patients on not just the medical process, but the legal framework. Not to push politics in a medical setting, but it’s very much intertwined.
It was really crazy in the beginning. Lots of reporters and lots of cameras and lots of protesters. It’s gotten quieter since, because people adapt. Protesters have gotten a little bit more insidious. They’re not overtly loud protesting. They’re kind of going under the radar. We do the best we can to prepare all the patients.
Franz: We used to do mostly people from the area, including old Mexico. We
were averaging about 100 patients for the area. When I say local, I include Carlsbad, Las Cruces, Midland-Odessa.
But when the law changed, I remember there was the six-week rule. During that time, clinics in East Texas were still open. We made friends with them, and for 2021, we had a large influx of their patients. There was a month we had close to 400 patients. Our influx from Texas is over 60% of our patients.
Have you also had threats of violence?
Franz: Back in the 1980s when we first started, there was violence. My clinic was blocked. Operation Rescue. I’ve been in the back of police car a couple times, because, when you are young and you see people doing this, you get upset. You take one of their signs or whatever, throw it away, and immediately you’re the back of the car. Violence was an issue then. They were killing doctors at the time.
I think my patients are safe. Now, we get picketers. One thing I will say though, which is kind of disappointing in our pro-choice group, is that back in the ‘80s, we used to have pro-choice demonstrators with anti-choice demonstrators verbally fighting it out. I haven’t seen one pro-choice person – even in El Paso – showing support for us. They talk a big, oh yeah, I agree with what you do, but where are you? These are the people who protest, why don’t you counter protest?
I’ve never worn bulletproof vests coming to work. I’ve never sneaked into my clinic with a hood on my head. Now, I’m 75 years old. I don’t have Instagram, I don’t have Facebook. I don’t have TikTok, so I don’t know. I don’t care.
One tactic of anti-abortion activists is to claim that doctors perform procedures on minors without parental consent.
Franz: In New Mexico, they don’t require parental consent, but I’d say one out of 100 minors doesn’t come with a parent. If they have an issue, you want the parent to be involved. Often, the most important thing I tell them is, you know, your mom might have gone through the same thing. You’d be surprised how many people will come back and say, oh, yeah, my mom went through it too.
Medication abortion has radically changed how abortions are done.
Franz: We don’t do surgery. When I turned 72, I decided I didn’t want the stress anymore, so we just run a medication clinic. I was one of the guys that were against them at first 20 years ago. I couldn’t believe it. This is not going to work. I’ve always thought abortion is a surgical procedure. And then, slowly but surely, we watched the results. The beauty of the pill is there’s no risk of infection, perforation, that sort of thing. We feel that’s probably a safer procedure. It’s easier. It’s faster. It’s less expensive. To me, it’s a win-win situation.
Gabi, how do young women of your generation feel about what’s going on?
Gabi: Pissed. They’re angry. They are, especially the ones who felt like this could never happen to them and then it does. Oh, this is me now. That news story is my experience now.
You know, even if Dobbs wasn’t overturned, and Roe was still alive and well, I still think that sometimes people just want to keep their head down, get it done. They just want to get through with it. It’s not obviously the most glamorous process. With New Mexico becoming such a haven for abortion access, we’re not going anywhere. If anything like Arizona happens to New Mexico, I know our feet will still be firmly planted on the ground.
It’s the stated goal of the anti-abortion movement to pass a nationwide ban. What would happen if we did?
Franz: Patients will have to start looking at Mexico or I don’t know where else. Maybe the Easterners will go to Bermuda. Canada? I mean, it’s crazy. That’s what people will do. They’ll spend the money to do something that is illegal. They will find a way.
A ban is not gonna happen. Not in my lifetime.
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