Two abortion providers grapple with their post-Roe reality
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What motivated Ali Block and Nikki Zite to become abortion providers?
Hey everybody, if you've been enjoying the Postro America series, we wanted to give you a little something extra. Last week I did an interview with Nikki Zeit for the Stat First Opinion podcast. If you remember, Nikki was the amazing abortion provider from Tennessee that we profiled in the first episode of the series. It was a great conversation about the unintended consequences of the Dobbs decision for providers and educators like us. And we thought you'd enjoy it. We'll be back on Thursday with episode four of the Nocturnists. Postro America. Every day at the Kansas Clinic where I perform abortions, I take care of pregnant people who have driven ten hours or more across state lines for their procedures.
They're exhausted after moving mountains to get there, taking time off work, arranging childcare, gathering funds. They're excessively grateful, and their gratitude makes me sad. These are the lucky ones, I think. These are the few that have managed to get here.
Mm.
That was Ali Block, a family medicine doctor, abortion provider, writer, and co-creator and host of the podcast The Nocturnists, Post Roe America. She was reading from her recent first opinion essay on the unintended consequences of the end of Roe v. Wade. Welcome to the new season of the First Opinion Podcast. I'm Tori Bosch, editor of First Opinion. First Opinion is Stat's platform for interesting, illuminating, and provocative articles about the life sciences writ large, written by biotech insiders, healthcare workers, researchers, and others. Welcome Allie and Nikki. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having us. We're happy to be here. So you both are or have been prov abortion providers, a field that of course comes with a great deal of baggage in many ways.
So what made you decide to go into this form of patient care?
That's a good question. Nikki, you want to take it first?
Uh sure. It's actually a relatively long origin story, but I'll condense it to say that um I went to OBGYN residency thinking I wanted to do high risk obstetrics. And within a few months of being at my institution, where they were doing amazing work with high-risk patients who wanted to stay pregnant. I realize that a lot of the women didn't want to be pregnant, and it would be safer for them to not be pregnant in a lot of the cases. Um so I started exploring. Family planning and at that time there was a fellowship, but it was really young and new. Um, and I looked into it and I was lucky enough to find a fellowship spot back home in Chicago. Uh, and the rest is history.
And for me, I was always interested in reproductive health and reproductive rights just from the way I grew up. I grew up in a very liberal family in New York City and supporting those causes was always kind of part of the water in my family that we were all drinking. And um then when I went to medical school and decided to go into family medicine for my specialty, I knew that I wanted to stay really broad and continue. Continue with reproductive, comprehensive reproductive health care as part of my practice. So I matched into a residency program in Santa Rosa in Sonoma County in California that has a wonderful abortion training program and got trained up there. And then when I graduated from residency, took a faculty job at another residency program in Northern California where I continued the work both providing abortion care to patients and also teaching the next generation of abortion providers.
And what year did you both um start providing abortions, if I can ask?
I finished my residency in um Memphis in two thousand and two and did my fellowship from two thousand and two to two thousand four and then moved to Knoxville, um, which has its own interesting stories about whether or not I was providing at different times um after two thousand and four.
For me, I finished medical school in 2011. So again, abortion was really baked into my residency program. So I started providing then, um, but then as an attending when I graduated in twenty fourteen.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What motivated Ali Block and Nikki Zite to become abortion providers?
0:00–4:13
2
How did the overturn of Roe v. Wade affect providers in different states?
4:13–10:51
3
What was the immediate reaction when the Dobbs decision leak was announced?
10:51–17:10
4
How does practicing abortion care differ between Kansas and Tennessee?
17:10–21:42
5
What challenges are trainees facing in learning abortion procedures after Dobbs?
21:42–28:05
6
How are providers coping with the lack of referral options and legal uncertainties?
28:05–32:01
7
What advice do the physicians give to anyone considering reproductive‑health work post‑Roe?
32:01–33:29
8
What are the broader implications for the future of abortion access in the U.S.?
33:29–33:37