Decisions Around Abortion Belong Between Patients And Doctors

Many people visit a radiologist at least once in their lives and are familiar with what those visits may entail: X-rays, MRIs, ultrasounds, and other imaging tests to screen for broken bones, cancer, and other injuries and diseases. Interventional Radiologists like myself are a subspecialty of Radiology, who do image guided surgical procedures. Patients generally know what to expect from these routine health care procedures.

What a patient may not expect is needing emergency abortion care following findings on an imaging study. But as a radiologist, that's exactly the type of health care I had to provide in one instance. To save a patient's life, I used my medical training and expertise to make the right decision with that patient, in concert with her obstetrician, and provide abortion care. And to ensure that doctors are able to continue providing this care for generations to come, we must pass the ballot initiative to secure our right to make our own health care decisions.

Access to reproductive health care is critical for patients' personal freedom, their health, and even, sometimes, their very lives. Consider the aforementioned patient. She came in for an ultrasound to evaluate her early gestation. What I found, to my dismay, was that she had an ectopic pregnancy. Ectopic pregnancies are never viable. Ever. And not only that, they are life-threatening to pregnant women. As ectopic pregnancies grow outside the uterus, they can rupture the structure where they've been implanted and cause serious internal bleeding. Ending these pregnancies as soon as possible is critical to saving the patient's life and preventing other health complications.

So that's what I did for my patient that day.

I shudder to think what would have happened to her had politicians been in charge of that decision. I've heard too many uninformed politicians share misinformation about pregnancy. Some have even tried to pass bills ordering doctors to "reimplant ectopic pregnancies" - something that is not possible and demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of medicine. There are scores of other medical conditions regarding pregnancy, besides an ectopic gestation, that would both make a pregnancy non-viable and put the patient's life at risk; others that simply would interfere with a family's attempt to produce a healthy viable child due to enforced continuance of a hopeless pregnancy and delaying another attempt. These conditions are not known to or understood by legislators, who have demonstrated that they wrongly believe every pregnancy automatically results in a happy, healthy baby and parents. Legislation interfering with timely abortion even of a fetal demise will kill women, forcing delays for judicial review.

Yet more and more, out-of-touch politicians are trying to interfere with abortion access, including here in Montana. In the 2023 legislative session alone, Montana politicians introduced more than a dozen anti-abortion bills, many of which were signed into law and are being discussed in the courts today. The Attorney General has tried to interfere with the ballot initiative to secure reproductive rights - Constitutional Initiative 128 - claiming falsely that it doesn't qualify and trying to keep it off the ballot in November.

That's exactly why we must pass Constitutional Initiative 128. This ballot initiative will prevent political interference in personal, private health care decisions, including those around abortion. It will ensure that doctors are able to do our jobs to save patients' lives, health, and future fertility. And it will protect Montanans' freedom to make their own health care decisions, with guidance from their doctors, not politicians who have no medical training or understanding.

Montanans value this freedom, as most recently evidenced by the number of signatures the citizen-led initiative to pass CI 128 turned in. Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights gathered nearly double the number of signatures required to get the initiative on the ballot, with signatures from every county of the state. It's clear that Montana voters want to have a say in protecting their health and personal freedom.

So in November, we have to make our voices heard and vote to ensure personal, private medical decisions remain between patients and their doctors. Together, we can ensure that patients like mine are able to get the life-saving care they need, and ensure that politicians stay out of our medicine.