Gallup moms face long drives as rural maternity care gaps grow
A Gallup mother made four out-of-town trips a week for late-pregnancy monitoring, a burden that turns the maternity-care gap into miles, gas money and child-care stress.
A Gallup mother with a high-risk pregnancy spent her final six weeks making four out-of-town trips a week for monitoring, splitting her care between Grants and Albuquerque while juggling gas costs, child care and time away from a child at home.
State health leaders heard about rural New Mexico’s birthing-care gaps on June 29, 2026. Rural parts of northwestern New Mexico, where access to maternal care is limited, have mortality rates three to four times higher than urban areas. March of Dimes’ New Mexico data put 33.3 percent of counties in maternity care deserts, 17.9 percent of women without a birthing hospital within 30 minutes and 23.3 percent of birthing people with no or inadequate prenatal care. The group counted 693 babies born in maternity care deserts, or 3.2 percent of all births in the state.
March of Dimes counts more than 35 percent of U.S. counties as maternity care deserts, affecting more than 2.3 million women of reproductive age and 150,000 births in 2022. Hospital closures and provider shortages are driving the access problem, especially in rural communities and among Black, Indigenous and other people of color.
Gallup Community Health was created by local physicians and health workers because of the lack of primary care access in Gallup and McKinley County, the New Mexico county with the largest primary care provider deficit. The clinic provides prenatal and postpartum care, high-risk pregnancy care, newborn care and ultrasound services, along with collaboration with regional hospitals for labor and delivery. It operates Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Friday and Saturday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Even so, labor and delivery still depends on regional hospital partnerships rather than a local birthing unit.
La Luz Women’s Center offers no-cost pregnancy support, testing and ultrasound services in Gallup, Albuquerque and Rio Rancho. New Mexico’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee published a pregnancy-associated deaths report in March 2025 covering 2015 through 2020.
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