How Texas Created a Women’s Health Crisis

In today’s newsletter, reporting on the deteriorating condition of women’s health care in Texas. And then:

Stephania Taladrid
Contributing writer

The doctor did not mince words. “When nobody wants to train in Texas, as the physicians get older and retire, there will be no ob-gyns in the state,” she told me. “And that’s when you’ll really see maternal mortality go up.” At the time, I was reporting on how doctors across Texas were delaying, or even outright denying, life-saving care to pregnant women, in compliance with the state’s abortion laws. Performing an abortion in nearly all circumstances was classified as a felony, for which physicians could lose their medical license and be sentenced up to life in prison. So, quietly, many doctors had begun to wonder, “Why stay in Texas?”

As I continued documenting the impact of new laws on maternal health, I started hearing from doctors who had made the difficult decision to move to another state, retire early, or finish their residencies outside of Texas, where they could practice medicine more freely. I wanted to explore how, taken together, these individual decisions could add up to an irreversible health crisis. In this week’s issue of the magazine, I report from the Rio Grande Valley, highlighting the stories of a group of doctors who were determined to bring about change in Texas—and who faced often insurmountable challenges to practicing medicine.

Among them is Zoe Kornberg, an ob-gyn resident in her mid-thirties. Kornberg had moved to the Valley from California, in June of 2020. But, over time, she had come to see herself as “part of the problem.” As she said, “I have the knowledge, all the support staff, everything to be able to help this person avoid one of these horrible outcomes—and they’re begging me to do it, but I’m not allowed to.” Ultimately, the bans felt like a personal attack: “The state sees you as a felon,” she said. When the act of caring for pregnant women in Texas could carry the same penalty as murder, the conclusion for her was, “You don’t want me here? Fine, I’ll leave.” Read “The Texas Ob-Gyn Exodus”