MGH rallies to hold line
Hospital community comes together as Roe v. Wade SCOTUS decision looms
Massachusetts General Hospital physicians, staff, patients and at least 200 other people rallied Wednesday for reproductive rights as a Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade looms.
One in four women has an abortion in her lifetime, said internal medicine physician Dr. Jessica Haberer, who called the procedure “absolutely a critical component of women’s health.”
”I’m here for women who want, deserve and need access to safe reproductive health care, including abortion,” she said. “This health care service must be safe, and we must ensure that women have access to it if they need it.”
Haberer said she was also there as the mother of a 16-yearold girl entering her reproductive years.
“Those reproductive years may include abortion if she needs it,” she said, “And that decision, whether she seeks one or not, should be hers. It should not be decided by a legislature or court.”
“And in the year 2022,” she added, “we should not be standing here today to talk about the Supreme Court of the United States taking away our rights.”
Bill Cotter, president of Operation Rescue Boston, called the rally “a shame and a disgrace to their profession since they took the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm.”
“They should be about nurturing and protecting the life of a baby as they would with any other patient,” Cotter said.
Since abortion will remain legal in Massachusetts regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision, he added, “it seems to me these rallies are political theater.”
But Dr. Karen Carlson, a primary care physician focusing on the health of women for 40 years, said the decision to have an abortion is not one made lightly.
“I have cared for many women who have been faced with pregnancy in intolerable situations, impossible decisions, and I have sat with them as they struggled to make decisions,” Carlson said. “I’ve been touched by the integrity that women bring to making these decisions.”
“As physicians, most of us took the Hippocratic Oath,” she said. “We pledged ourselves to the service of humanity and to the protection of our patients. Our patients are our utmost priority. Because of this sacred duty, we cannot stay silent with this threat to overturn Roe v. Wade.”
“Now let us listen to the wisdom of our mothers, our grandmothers, so that we do not slide backwards into darker times but rather hope for a better future for women and for all people.”
Twenty-six states are poised to ban or restrict abortion, Dr. Alison Packard said, since the bombshell leak of a draft opinion suggesting the Supreme Court is plan to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade case legalizing abortion nationwide.