This abortion doctor is not ready to leave Alabama. 'You don't want me here? That's why I'm gonna stay'
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — People often ask Dr. Leah Torres why she stays in Alabama.
The 43-year-old OB-GYN — who strides into her clinic most mornings wearing a clitoris pendant and T-shirts with slogans that declare "ABORT THE PATRIARCHY" — does not consider this conservative Deep South state her home.
A few weeks after she arrived, the state Board of Medical Examiners revoked her temporary medical license to practice, accusing her of ethical violations.
It took her seven months to get it back, a legal battle that cost her $115,360.93, according to the price tag she affixed to the framed license hanging in her office at the West Alabama Women's Center.
The center was one of the busiest abortion clinics in the state, until the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last year. Abortion became illegal in Alabama, one of over a dozen states with full bans. Now that doctors who perform the procedure in Alabama risk up to 99 years in prison, Torres finds herself, once again, unable to offer the full spectrum of reproductive medical care she was trained for.
But Torres has no intention of backing down.
"You don't want me here? That's why I'm gonna stay," she said, sitting at a desk strewn with laboratory invoices and a tiny fetus replica handed out by anti-abortion campaigners. "I'm not leaving, just out of spite!"
Torres believes her work is not done in Alabama, a state with the in the nation and the . The Republican-dominated Legislature joined nine other conservative states, which would allow more than 200,000 uninsured non-elderly adults in the state to become eligible for coverage.
