An El Paso woman thought her doctor tied her tubes. The next year, she was pregnant

Grissel Velasco didn’t want more kids.

In 2014, Velasco — 31 years old at the time — was expecting her third child, and was receiving care at Sun City Women’s Health Care in El Paso, owned by OB-GYN and then-El Paso City Council member Dr. Michiel Noe.

With Sun City staff’s guidance, allegedly at Noe’s recommendation, she paid to receive tubal ligation — also known as tube tying — at the same time she delivered her baby boy. Having any more C-section births in the future would be risky, she said she was told.

“They were the ones who read the papers to me, and for that reason I signed to not have children,” Velasco said in Spanish during an interview with KERA News. “I agreed to not having more children.”

But around October 2015, an at-home pregnancy test came out positive. An ultrasound at a New Mexico clinic confirmed Velasco was about four or five months pregnant with a healthy baby girl.

Velasco said she came out of the appointment in tears, terrified. She remembers later trying to explain to her son’s doctor how she was pregnant again when her son was only about a year old.