Dr. Mary Fariba Afsari

The new reality is that it's very, very difficult for people to cross lines and to get care in other states.

There are a lot of challenges.

There's financial challenges.

There's legal challenges.

There's a lot of fear that if people want to cross a border and get care that's not legal in their state, that somehow they would be discovered doing that and that they would be in trouble for doing that.

There are insurance challenges because state by state, you can't necessarily accept insurance.

And so I have to say that the vision of being able to provide care for folks that are in states where they don't really have reproductive access is not exactly what my clinic is able to provide at this time.

My clinic at this time is truly a model of care for how we could envision ourselves outreaching to other communities.

We've sort of demonstrated now that it is very possible to do, and it's not that difficult.

I mean, the political fights aren't working, right?

We can see it.

We're not moving forward in terms of providing better care for women.

And I write about a scenario in the book where a couple comes in and this woman is basically in full organ failure.

She had a preexisting condition.

She knew the pregnancy might kill her.

She had been advised by every doctor to not get pregnant.

And then when she became pregnant, she was advised to end the pregnancy early in order to increase her chances of surviving.

And I say in the book, everybody wants to believe that they're the miracle case.

A lot of people want to have that baby and they want to grow that family and they don't want to believe that that's not going to be possible for them.

That scenario where she kept the pregnancy and she came in pretty advanced, you know, stage sickness.