Roe v. Wade gave women a right to choose abortion. But doctors like me have a choice, too.

There came a time in medical school when I first witnessed an abortion, a dilation and curettage, where the cervix was dilated and the tiny fetus sucked out by vacuum. The first time I saw the body parts was the first time I knew I would never perform one of these procedures. I was defining my role as a doctor in terms of relieving suffering and extending life, not ending it.

Dr. Ben Carson, consummate pediatric neurosurgeon and current secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, has come out vehemently against abortion. In an interview in 2015 when he was running for president, he told me, "I've spent many, many a day and many a night operating on premature babies and then seeing them as adults, as productive adults. There is no way that anybody's going to convince me that that's a meaningless mass of cells." 

States are challenging Roe v. Wade 

I agree completely with Dr. Carson from the point of view of a physician, which is not to say that I have a fixed view on abortion; I don’t. I am sensitive to the devastating impact of rape and abuse on women and the pressure to abort when the mother's life is at risk. I am very aware of the fact that since 1973, Roe v. Wade set a precedent where abortion is legal across the country up to the point of viability, when the fetus can exist on its own outside the womb, which with the help of modern technology is generally considered to be 22 to 24 weeks gestation. 

From a purely public health perspective, Roe makes sense to me. Before Roe, it never made much sense in terms of medical safety for a pregnant woman to be rushing across state lines to an unknown facility in the middle of the night to gain access to a state where abortion was legal.

But Roe v. Wade is currently being challenged with new laws in the states, and the number of states with pending highly restrictive abortion laws is growing. On Friday, Missouri's legislature passed a bill to outlaw almost all abortions after eight weeks. This came on the heels of Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signing into law a near-total abortion ban law in her state.