Oge Young is a retired OB-GYN and past president of NH Medical Society.

January 22, 2023, was to mark the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that protected the privacy of a woman and her physician in her decision about pregnancy.

It respected a woman’s right to choose if and when she would have children. It supported the notion that everything we can do to give women control over their bodies and their fertility enhances their health and changes the world for the better.

Politics crept into the judicial branch of our democracy last year and took away the right to privacy in deciding about a woman’s health, her family and her future. The Dobb’s v. Jackson decision overturned Roe on June 24, 2022. The result has been that 1 in 3 women of reproductive age may no longer access abortion in their home state.

Bans have eliminated all abortions in 14 states (AL, AR, ID, GA, KY, LA, MO, MS, OK, SD, TN, TX, WI, and WV). Bans on abortion after 15 weeks are in effect in 4 other states (AZ, FL, NC and UT).

The inevitable result is that affluent women will continue to have access to safe and affordable contraception and, when that fails, abortions across state lines if necessary. But, marginalized and less affluent women will not have access to needed preventive services, and they will again resort to unsafe abortions and suffer the consequences.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that 22 million unsafe abortions are performed annually in countries with limited or no access to safe legal abortions. These unsafe abortions result in tens of thousands of deaths and millions of permanent disabilities.

Some of us are old enough to have witnessed the consequence of illegal abortions performed by unskilled providers under non-sterile conditions. The rest of us have learned those lessons from history. Sadly, I fear we will not need history as our teacher with Roe overturned, because we will again see deaths and permanent injuries of women.

None of us have wanted to return to a time when desperate women, often of limited means, seek unsafe pregnancy terminations. This decision is deeply personal and difficult, one that should remain the prerogative of each woman and her provider, not usurped by lawmakers.

It is easy to focus on the darkness of this time, but the fight for reproductive rights burns stronger than ever. Planned Parenthood of NH suggests that we light a candle on January 22 showing that our commitment to women’s freedom is still ablaze. I encourage you to contact your newly elected legislators to share why you care about reproductive rights.

Abortion remains accessible in New Hampshire but without legal protection. For this reason, there will be HB 88, the Access to Abortion care Act (AAA) before the NH Legislature this year, to legally protect a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy (before 24 weeks).

Similar laws have been passed in all of the other New England states. We must make clear that New Hampshire is a state that values privacy, freedom and individual-decision making, by passing this act.

As a health professional who had the privilege to care for women for over 40 years, I believe that reversing Roe was a grave mistake, contrary to the health of women in this country. Medicine is about caring for human beings, not about politics and ideology.

We must embrace women and their health.

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