Tanya Mosley

But here you are a doctor rooted in science and fact.

I mean, how did you hold those two truths to come to this understanding of how she died and how that actually drives your purpose?

Our guest today is Dr. Mary Fariba Afsari.

Her new book is titled Labor.

We'll be right back after a short break.

I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air.

You knew you were going to be a physician of some sort, and you initially dreamed of being a pediatrician until you spent time in Bolivia.

I'd love for you to tell us just a little bit about what you saw there that made you change course.

Wow, doctor.

I'm just thinking about 20 years later and

These are realities in our country right now as well, post-DOBs and abortion bans.

Are you beginning to also see people who are crossing state lines to see you?

Kind of give us a sense of what you are now experiencing in this new reality.

I want to talk to you just a little bit about the realities of this moment, not just in our health care system, but just overall the political fighting over women's reproductive rights.

And you have written about how you have this visceral aversion to slogans, particularly around abortion, pro-choice, pro-life.

You write that it's an affront to our shared humanity to reduce these decisions to words that fit on a bumper sticker.

How do the political fights we're all witnessing from the outside kind of obscure the realities of what you are seeing every day?

I want to ask you about the realities of being an OBGYN under the Trump administration, the CDC, which tracks maternal mortality.

They're the people who help us understand why American women are dying in pregnancy.

A whole team of researchers there at the CDC were placed on administrative leave earlier this year, and that data collection has stopped.