My career in medicine spanned a pre- and post-Roe world. States now must separately determine whether women and their families will have agency over their own lives when it comes to reproductive health, or whether their life’s timeline and goals can be undermined by the state.

The pre-Roe world was not pretty. If you had funds and your life and ambitions were turned upside down with a pregnancy, you could make things right again by traveling to a place where a safe, legal abortion could be obtained. But, if you didn’t, in desperation, it was likely that you obtained an illegal or self-inflicted abortion. I witnessed a “septic abortion ward,” filled with sick, often dying patients who were, as my colleague Dr. David Bingham wrote, “convinced that abortion was their best choice in a world that left them nothing but difficult choices.”

A foundational precept of health care is a commitment from a physician to endeavor to do what is best for a patient, driven by the latter’s  values and beliefs, not by a political agenda. Maine law protects the rights of an individual to determine her own reproductive future. That law, however, can be changed with each new legislature.

As a physician, how terrible I would feel telling a patient, “Sorry I can’t help you. Last year, it was different but the Maine legislature changed hands.” Let’s place women’s health care permanently in their own hands. Tell lawmakers to pass L.D. 780 and let the people decide.

Norma Dreyfus, M.D.
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