Dr. Mary Fariba Afsari

Thank you, Tanya.

I'm so happy to be here.

I think there's a perception out there that OBGYNs live in a world of celebration, bringing a new life, welcoming babies.

And that's not all entirely false.

That's true.

That's a huge part of my motivation for going into this line of work.

But when you're practicing In-N-Out, where you're actually caring for people who need comprehensive reproductive care –

So what that means is from the time somebody is old enough to cycle periods, get pregnant, have to prepare for that potential, have to face their own sexuality issues.

and have to find people that can provide for them the kind of care that meets them where they are.

It's really important to have places and physicians and institutions that can meet them where they are.

And it's not that I didn't feel like I was doing that in my own office space.

It's just that I felt like I could do it better.

I felt like looking down the pipeline, even 10 years ago, at what was going to happen with reproductive access, it was pretty clear to those of us that were working in the world.

The Dobbs decision, and I say this in my book, it didn't come as a big surprise to me.

on that day.

We had seen that this is what the groundwork was being laid towards.

We also knew that historically in this country, even pre-Dobbs decision, even with Roe v. Wade, there were

folks in certain communities from certain ethnicities.

There was this implicit racism that happens in the health care system that we are aware of.

And so we knew that there were already people that were not being met and that it was just going to expand and just affect more people over time.