Kim Schrier: “This new post-Roe reality that we are living with is still sinking in for most of us, but if you are a woman who is…”

“This new post-Roe reality that we are living with is still sinking in for most of us, but if you are a woman who is pregnant now and needs to end that pregnancy, and you are in one of the States that has outlawed abortion, every day is filled with panic and horror, trying to figure out how to get the care you need. This is a crisis. Now, politicians in some of those States are threatening to criminalize travel to another State for abortion care and to criminalize doctors and anyone else who might help, for example, with transportation. This is outrageous. Such extreme laws are nothing less than an attack on women--on our autonomy, on our freedom, on our health, and on our privacy. These are backward positions. They are extreme and draconian. The decision to have an abortion is one for a woman to make in consultation with her doctor--no one else, definitely not politicians. As a doctor, I have been in the room with women making the extremely difficult and personal decision about whether to end a pregnancy. Politics has no place there. I have been in the room with a woman with an ectopic pregnancy for whom abortion is the standard of care. Let's be clear, State laws that criminalize abortion and also criminalize travel across State lines for abortion put doctors in an impossible situation and put women at risk.…”