Post-Roe, WA is a health care ‘sanctuary’ — for both patients and providers

Growing up in Corpus Christi, Texas, Sarah Villarreal saw a lot of teenagers and very young women getting pregnant.

“I was actually the first in my family to graduate high school without a child,” she said.

Dr. Villarreal said that’s what motivated her to become an OB/GYN: giving people access to contraception and reproductive care options that she didn’t even know about as a teenager.

But then Texas started restricting access to abortions.

“I wasn’t really feeling like I could safely practice,” she said, “and I felt like I was losing a lot of the joy that I had in my job previously.”