“The mentorship in OBGYN is huge.
We have to depend on each other; we cannot do this alone.”
The following story extract is from a conversation with an OBGYN mentor and mentee.
Mentor: I think too, this just dawned on me that I think the same with the 50 years of protection is that, as they say in the Barbie movie, “I've stayed still so you could see how far you've come.” It doesn't seem like that big of a deal to be a woman doctor anymore, but it is a big deal, but I've also taken that for granted. Of course I'm a doctor and a woman, but now I feel like the whole attitude towards what women can and can't do, it's kind of flipped on its head right now. I fear that for my daughter.
Mentor: My feelings are still pretty complicated, and will come out muddy. Back to the river. Dobbs came out and we went for a hike down the Middle Fork. I was mad the whole hike. I'm carrying 30 pounds on my back and I'm stomping. I have to find a way through. I can't be mad all the time. This isn't the end. There's got to be a way through. There's good medical reasons why we need this to keep women safe. Women are autonomous beings. They should be able to make their own decisions. There has to be a way through.
The first year was disappointing because there really wasn't much traction. It seemed like everybody just, nobody knew what to do and nobody knew how to organize. At a year, it sort of all came back to me: oh my God, it's been a year and nothing's happened. Things started to get happening. The Center for Women's Safety thing started that second year, the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare. ACOG got involved a little bit. AMA did squat, but I remember just feeling like this is so wrong to take the medical decision-making power out of between the woman and the doctor. It's wrong to take that decision-making power away from the woman. I felt I was being complicit by just going along. That made me feel bad. I was talking to my husband about it. It feels like what women describe when they're in an abusive relationship. Everything else is so great. There's this one thing that's really, really bad. Idaho is great. My partner is great, but this is so wrong that I just can't stand it.
Then we met with one of the congresspeople. I thought we laid out a pretty good plan: all we want is a medical exception so that we don't feel we're going to go to jail when we're trying to save a woman's life or health. Easy, obvious. We had our speeches and were ready. We got 10 minutes into the meeting and he said, “No, you're never going to get it. Period. Stop. I'm in charge of what comes to the floor. You're never going to get it.” I thought, if we can't even get a medical exception for health, these people are horrid. I cannot stay.
I did the counseling thing we had online. EAP. I sat down with one of the EAP people to see if I could find a way through. I couldn't get past that. This is just wrong. It's sexist. It feels like racism. It feels like abuse to me. I couldn't see a way. Before I finished my career in the next five years, that's how I was going to end it.
We had that meeting with the congressperson in the winter, January or February, and I decided to leave about two months after that.
