Judging a book by its cover is easy. I just did it. There was a title at my library last week, So When Are You Having Kids?, and I judged it. That’s a loaded question: Am I even able to have kids? Do I want kids? If I do, when is a good time, personally or professionally? Who could ever be ready? Yet, how many times a day do …
I drive through my leafy suburb, awash in beautiful foliage. It’s peak color, with vermillion juxtaposed with citrine and crimson. And I see the reality of our ugly world peeking in every so often. Proposition 3 signs are casually sprinkled on lawns, intersections, and billboards; they’re in harsh black and white, implying the proposition is too confusing or too extreme. And the issue it represents is a clear-cut dichotomy.
We are …
Physicians and activism: Why did it take Roe’s downfall for us to get involved?
Her image captured the world: mangled hip, jutting belly, stretcher, war, a woman carried out of a bombed maternity hospital. She’s gray, contrasted against a colorful beach towel, among the smoldering ruins of Mariupol. The outcome was bad; neither she nor the baby survived despite the perimortem Cesarean. News stories reported that she gasped and, with her dying breaths, said that she did not want to live in a world …
The unheard cries: an obstetrician’s nightmare
When the Delta variant hit Mississippi, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) published alarming statistics for maternal and perinatal deaths. Pregnant women were dying at three times the pre-COVID baseline rate. These young, healthy women would rapidly deteriorate in a matter of days, with three weeks as the average time to death. And those were just the moms. Fetuses under 20 weeks gestation aren’t counted in the mortality rate …
What does it even mean to work through the unimaginable?
Before there was doom-scrolling, there were sad books. For me, it was Chapter 18 in Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. The chapter is a fictional portrayal of Mr. Grossman imagining his mother’s last words. The protagonist—modeled on the author—and their two mothers have the same fate at the hands of the Nazis. I tried several times to get through that chapter, through that letter, and through the book. I …
The letter this physician wants to write to her patients
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