A Very Dangerous Place to Be Pregnant Is Getting Even Scarier

Once a week, Adrian Billings drives his white Chevy pickup from his home in Alpine, Texas, to Presidio, a city along the Mexican border. This summer he’s been taking his son Blake, who’s home from college, with him. The drive, through mountains and desert on a two-lane highway across which actual tumbleweeds roll, takes an hour and a half.

Billings is a family doctor, one of only a handful in this part of West Texas. He offers a one-stop shop for his patients’ ailments: heart murmurs, kidney stones, etc. Most of the time he works in Alpine or the nearby ...