Post Election Message

The problem with writing a pre-election message is that I have felt the need to follow it with a post-election message. Here we are, a week after I intended to write this column...

The problem with writing a pre-election message is that I have felt the need to follow it with a post-election message.  There's nothing like creating my own writer’s block! Here we are, a week after I intended to write this column.  I haven’t been able to find my voice. I was one of those who thought Kamala would win by a landslide.  I felt confident women would carry the day. 

My 89-year-old mom, Carol, traveled from New Orleans to be by my side.  We planned to celebrate the election results together.  All eyes were on Wisconsin at a national and local level.  My mom grew up on a farm in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, which still feels like home to me.   I had also become enthralled with Kristin Lyerly, an OB/GYN doctor and mom of four sons, who was boldly running for Congress.  She was born in Peebles, miles from where my parents grew up.  As someone still finding it hard to talk to my Wisconsin relatives about the “A-word,” I’ve been inspired by her bravery. 

Watching the results with my mom made me think about her bold choices.  Carol thought she would live near her three sisters and their families in Fond du Lac for her whole life.  Instead, my father made a career leap, and we moved to Brown Deer, a suburb of Milwaukee.  I was six weeks old in 1963 when my mom pivoted her life as a sheltered housewife in a white suburb and got involved in the civil rights movement.   She took me to activist meetings as young as I can remember and inspired me to become political. In 1973, our family moved to Cleveland for another giant career move of my father’s.  Soon after, they divorced, and my father, sister, and brother moved away.   My mom and I joined an organization of radical activists committed to changing the world. The day I turned fifteen, we moved to India to do community service work.  The ride gets pretty wild from there, so I will save that story for another day.  

Back to the present.  When Mom arrived in NYC on November 4th,  I donned her with a necklace made by my friend, Dr. Panna Lossy. Panna is a family doctor who has spent her life helping people with abortion care and is on our board at MYA Network. Like my mom, she’s also crafty. She heated a glass bead to make the necklace and then put it into ice water, creating cracks in the glass.  My mom wore this sacred charm as we prepared to break through the glass ceiling together.  We had no doubt.  

The ceiling turned out to be thicker and higher than we imagined.  My mom figured it out and went to bed long before my bubble popped.  I was wide awake to see Wisconsin turn red and Dr. Lyerly’s campaign topple.  I felt flattened. It was personal, and similar to how I felt with the Dobb’s decision.

I was relieved to follow the continued election gains at the state level.  Ten states had measures on the ballot this year to protect abortion and other reproductive rights. Seven of these ten measures were passed, protecting abortion rights in many states, including Missouri, which previously had a complete abortion ban. As New Yorkers, we were delighted that Proposal 1 passed, enshrining abortion protection into our state’s constitution.

Unfortunately, three measures did not pass. Nebraska passed an anti-abortion measure.  Arguably, the most widely discussed measure was Amendment 4, which was on the ballot in Florida. A remarkable 57% of voters supported the amendment. This was just a few points short of the prohibitive and controversial 60% needed to pass. Interestingly, only 43% of Florida voters voted for Kamala Harris, meaning that many Floridians who voted for Trump also voted to protect abortion rights. 

For further political analysis and commentary, there is nobody better than Jessica Valenti.  I bow to her.  If you’re not following her column, please do! I will continue to write from the medical, emotional, and cultural perspectives I see daily by helping people with their reproductive health care.    

So, as many of us are saying in the abortion world… Let’s pivot.  

What do I want to do with this column and my “one wild and precious life”?  Here’s where I’m investing my energy.  Thank you for being here by my side.   

In my medical practice, Early Options, we continue to provide private, quality medical care.  Patients can bring a loved one and have the choice of abortion method that’s right for them.  I have the privilege of spending as much time listening as people need.  I am excited to announce that we just got funding that will allow us to provide personalized medical care at a discount (or free!) to anyone who wants simple, gentle abortion care offered in a primary care setting.  

In my writing, I am passionate about interweaving perspectives. I have always been interested in the intersection of the personal and the political and how this plays out in everyday life.  As a doctor providing abortion care, this lens has been essential to helping people in my practice.  It is also why I started interviewing my patients who wanted to speak about their experience choosing abortion.   If you are here taking the time to read this column, I hope you will listen to these voices.  We’ve tried to edit them to reasonable soundbites for a world in a hurry.  They are a precious gift of insight amid personal and political vulnerability.  

At MYA Network, the not-for-profit I co-founded with two family docs, we continue our work to normalize abortion care, both medically and culturally. We are motivated to take our “Issue of Tissue” project to new heights.  This work went viral internationally and was featured in an opinion piece in the New York Times and at the Whitney Museum.    We will also continue to help patients find clinicians who provide integrated, primary care-based abortion.  We will feature other clinicians, doctors, and projects that have a similar vision of reimagining abortion.

In addition, we have been working overtime to open a training program in early abortion methods here in NYC.  We propose to train Advanced Practice Clinicians (APCs = PAs, midwives, and nurse practitioners), emergency room doctors, and primary care doctors who are in a position to integrate abortion into mainstream medical practices.  The program focuses on a quick and gentle medical procedure, manual aspiration, which takes only a few minutes to complete in a regular practice setting.  Given its simplicity and versatility, this game-changing method is critical.  Manual Aspiration has been the passion of my entire medical career, and you will hear more about it in this column.  It can simplify abortion care and save lives in all fifty states.   

And I will continue to believe in human decency.  I’m clinging to that right now.  What else is there to do?  The people who come to me to end their pregnancies are ordinary people who are trying to make their lives work.  They are not doing anything wrong.  Doctors and clinicians are trying to do their jobs to help people with their health care.  We are not criminals.  Politicians are distorting this issue and sacrificing women’s health for a voting block.  We will continue to learn, educate, and fight.  

The silver lining is that this glass bead necklace might inspire my independent, feisty mom to live past 93.   Then, I hope to sit by her side for the next presidential election.  May democracy and choice prevail. 

Isabel Guarnieri, et al. “Abortion Rights Ballot Measures Win in 7 out of 10 US States.” Guttmacher Institute, 6 Nov. 2024, www.guttmacher.org/2024/11/abortion-rights-state-ballot-measures-2024.

It’s our mission to normalize abortion care, medically and culturally. If you can, please invest in this vision of primary care-based abortion and help expand abortion options in primary care settings.