Tanya Mosley
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Appearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Roberta Shorrock directs the show.
With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.
A new book by Portland doctor Mary Fariba Afsari opens with a vivid image of her trying to fit a red gynecology table in the back of a Mini Cooper.
It's 2021, and she's 15 years into her career as a board-certified OBGYN who walked away from a traditional practice, bought a 31-foot RV, taught herself to drive it, and turned it into one of the country's only mobile gynecology clinics.
She parks it in communities with few health care options.
People who need reproductive care and have nowhere else to go since the landmark Dobbs decision in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade.
But the RV is only part of the story.
Dr. Afsari is the daughter of Iranian immigrants who left Iran ahead of the Islamic Revolution when she was three years old.
She's named after her grandmother, Meri, a woman she never met who died attempting an illegal abortion in Iran, leaving behind four young children.
That loss shaped her family and the doctor's career.
Her new book, Labor, One Woman's Work, comes at a moment when abortion access has been stripped from millions of American women.
Maternal mortality is rising, and OBGYNs are leaving states where they can no longer practice medicine without fear of prosecution.
Dr. Afsari, welcome to Fresh Air.
I want to start inside of this RV clinic because you had a thriving practice.