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Julia McDonald is a family medicine doctor in central Maine and an international humanitarian aid physician. She is faculty at Maine Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency, medical director of the Mabel Wadsworth Center, clinical associate professor at Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine and affiliate faculty at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Imagine going to your doctor and asking for help, only to be told “We cannot do that here,” or “You can’t have that.” Imagine the panic and desperation of knowing what your body or your family needs, but not having access to it. That’s the reality patients and their trusted medical providers face in many states across the country where abortion care or gender-affirming care or both are banned.
I am a Maine doctor who provides full-spectrum care to my patients. I went to school for many years to study science and medicine in order to take care of families.One of the most sacred aspects of my work is listening to a patient’s situation and life needs, discussing their medical options, then supporting their decision. Sometimes these decisions are small — like whether to start or stop a medication — but sometimes they are life-changing, life-saving, and life-affirming, like the decision to start gender-affirming therapy. These decisions, like all medical decisions, should be made by patients with the support of their doctors, not by politicians.
Last week, LD 227, a bill known as a “shield law” took effect. This law is a necessary step for Maine to protect patients and doctors from out-of-state attacks. This law helps ensure I can continue offering care that is legal in Maine to my patients. As I write this, 22 states have enacted bans or near total bans on abortion care, At least 26 have passed laws banning access to safe and effective medical care for gender non-conforming adolescents, and some have moved to restrict access to this care for adults.
As politicians in other states restrict or ban access to gender-affirming care and abortion, I am proud that our elected leaders in Maine passed proactive laws to expand healthcare and protect against potential attacks.
I work as a physician at a community hospital, an abortion provider at Maine Family Planning, and medical director of Abortion Services at Mabel Wadsworth Center in Bangor. I have seen firsthand how bans affect families in other states. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, I worked in New Mexico providing abortion services to patients who had to travel hundreds of miles from states that had banned access. Abortion restrictions did not reduce the number of abortions, but only added to the risk, stress, and cost of the patients’ medical care. Banning care and threatening patients and doctors is bad medicine, bad politics, and immoral.
I am proud that in the two years since Roe was overturned, a majority of our state lawmakers worked to strengthen laws pertaining abortion and related care. Some of those laws include protections for providers — protections that help ensure my colleagues and I can continue to serve our patients to the best of our abilities.
LD 227 takes action to protect health care providers and patients seeking reproductive and gender-affirming care within our borders. What that means is that this law seeks to provide a layer of protection for clinicians like me, so that I can continue to offer the care I am trained to provide, healthcare that is safe, effective and legal in Maine.
I am grateful for the promises of LD 227 and for the support of most elected officials, but I understand that lawmakers can change with each election. As Mainers, we must remain vigilant, educating ourselves on how our elected officials have voted on policies that matter, and then be sure to vote in local, statewide, and national elections in November. Our health and future depend on it!
