A California OB-GYN on her experience as a Black woman navigating the intersection of medicine, politics and personal autonomy in reproductive health.
I am an OB-GYN physician who provides comprehensive reproductive healthcare, including abortion care, in San Francisco. When I first imagined my career as a physician, I thought I would hold the answers for what my patients needed—as if I could confidently state the only truth. I spent years of my life learning as much as I could to understand the human body and how it works, to learn the studies that continually push medicine forward.
I studied, I read and read, I passed all of my exams, became a licensed physician and a board-certified OB-GYN and complex family planning specialist.
Nothing I learned could teach me as much as my patients have. I now understand my role as being equipped to help people, but most importantly I must show up with humility. My patients make difficult decisions within the contexts of their lives, and they are the true experts on what they need.
I wish politicians would learn that lesson. There is no universe in which they are better equipped than a pregnant person to decide whether they should have an abortion. There is no law they can create that encapsulates the complexities that influence someone’s decision to have an abortion. Their arrogance in attempting to regulate this care has dire consequences for people and their families.
In 2018, I embarked on a fellowship in family planning and became pregnant at the end of that year. I started an exploratory study that focused on the lived experiences of abortion for Black women. As a Black pregnant woman myself, I connected with people who could have been my patients and could have been me. I learned from the aunties who were there with them. I learned the deep sense of love that you can carry as a pregnant person. I learned that love and loss and parenthood could be found in abortion care, all at once. I gained a new understanding of how your experiences and the stories of generations before you can feed into your pregnancy.
I also learned that abortion could be a true act of selflessness and love. One woman told me, “You love someone so much you just can’t see them suffer.” I have heard this sentiment echoed by many, both from patients ending pregnancies for pregnancy complications and those ending the pregnancy for other reasons.
Our ability to make decisions for ourselves about our pregnancies and get the care we need was constrained even when Roe v. Wade was the law of the land. As Black women specifically, we disproportionately faced barriers like federal laws that prohibit abortion insurance coverage for people with low incomes and state laws that made many jump through unnecessary hoops to get care. Those who continue a pregnancy, whether desired or forced, face a system steeped in racism that endangers Black people’s health and lives.
Love and loss and parenthood could be found in abortion care, all at once.
As we look to the future, we can’t go back to a standard that wasn’t serving everyone. We must push for a bolder liberatory vision that takes politicians out of these decisions and doesn’t leave anyone behind.
That bolder vision has room for recognizing that these decisions aren’t straightforward. Abortion can be love but at the same time loss. Abortion can be relief but at the same time despair. Abortion can be the right decision, and at the same time feels like the only decision among a set of horrible decisions. What always remains true is the patient is the one who is the expert of their lives. No one can know what is right for them.
As an abortion provider, I have cared for people who oppose abortion and never thought they would choose it. I have cared for people who chose abortion as parents, a sometimes difficult decision that is made with the deepest love and sorrow.
I am grateful to my patients. I have learned to honor the space that they need. The many disturbing stories of people denied care in states that ban abortion have helped the American public understand what my patients have taught me. These stories have also horrified my patients. Every day I hear patients tell me how thankful they are to live in California, recognizing that in another state they would not have the basic right to choose what is right for them. The nuances and complexities of their reproductive lives cannot be regulated.
Abortion bans at any point in pregnancy aren’t about health and safety—they’re about control. Interfering in their reproductive lives is the deepest disrespect to my patients’ autonomy in the face of the thoughtful and often difficult decisions they make for themselves, their families and their pregnancies.
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