ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The parking lot to the abortion clinic in this desert city was crowded recently with cars from out of state: four from Texas. Two from Oklahoma and others from Arizona, Louisiana and Iowa. Pillows and blankets were scattered across backseats to ease the journey home, which for most would come by day's end.
In one car, a young man in a Nirvana T-shirt rubbed his palms together and stared off into the sky. In another, a pregnant woman handed an infant to her partner and climbed out into the dry 103-degree heat. She walked past four security cameras, around a wrought-iron fence and through a double-deadbolt door.
They had driven here — others arrive by plane and Greyhound bus — like many before them. New Mexico, one of six states that allows late-term abortions, has for years been overwhelmed by travelers coming from large swaths of the country where the procedure is forbidden. But the Supreme Court's ruling Friday on a Mississippi law to ban most abortions after 15 weeks, reversing the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, has New Mexico's abortion providers bracing for a new influx of patients from conservative states.
