Daughter moving to Illinois
Gallegos was in high school when she stumbled upon an anti-abortion website that called her dad a murderer and listed his work address.
She had grown up in awe of her father’s obstetrics-gynecology work. Becoming aware of the risk he faced in choosing to provide abortions suddenly made that work seem even more important.
In 2020, she became executive administrator of Braid’s abortion clinics in San Antonio and Tulsa. She didn’t want the staff to know she was his daughter, but Braid could not wait to tell everyone.
“It was great having her aboard,” Braid said. “She’s very passionate.”
The last year has put Gallegos’ passion to the test.
In November, she launched the abortion clinic in Illinois, one of the states that has become a destination for people seeking to end pregnancies because of its protective laws and central location.
In Illinois, abortion is legal until a fetus can survive outside the womb, usually around 24 weeks of pregnancy, and later if the patient’s health is endangered.
The one-story building with a blue roof in Carbondale has drawn patients from Missouri to Florida, Gallegos said. Braid, her father, is one of the doctors who work there.
She flies almost weekly to the new location, relying on video calls to see her husband and children, ages 4, 6 and 18, back in San Antonio.
On one trip Reuters joined, she sat for hours on a grounded plane in Oklahoma City as a tornado and hailstorm raged outside. The flight made it to St. Louis in the middle of the night, where she grabbed ramen from the hotel lobby and slept a few hours before driving to work in Carbondale the next morning.
