Dear UCI School of Medicine community:
In September of last year, I shared my thoughts on the passing of Senate Bill 8 (SB8) in Texas, a highly restrictive law that essentially bans abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy and gives private citizens permission and significant financial incentives to violate these women’s privacy and their personal autonomy. The bill was a problematic, but ultimately successful attempt to restrict reproductive healthcare.
Here we are today, a mere eight months later, and reproductive rights are once again in the forefront of the news. And I, once again, feel compelled to speak up.
At the University of California, Irvine, our mission is to Discover, Teach and Heal, consistent with the individual needs of every patient that we are privileged to serve. As the Dean of the School of Medicine at UCI, I lead a public institution dedicated to upholding California’s commitment to the women and families of our state and beyond. We expressly re-affirm our commitment to protect the reproductive rights of all women we serve, consistent with California law and more importantly, our values and our mission. We commit ourselves to defend comprehensive reproductive healthcare, again consistent with the California law and our ethical obligations as physicians. We acknowledge that interference with the right of physicians and patients to determine what medical care a patient should receive can disproportionately affect women in low-income communities and communities of color. We will do everything we can to mitigate the effects of any of such interference on affected patients, in line with Governor Newsom’s statements of May 11.
In his statements, Governor Newsom issued his vision for the future of the state of California. He noted, “this state continues to recognize and protect their fundamental rights…We’re expanding access to these critical services, welcoming businesses and their employees fleeing anti-abortion states, and reaffirming our commitment to continuing to work closely with the Legislature and reproductive rights stakeholders to further solidify California’s leadership on abortion rights.”
I write today to support Governor Newsom’s leadership on this issue and to lend our school’s weight as a leader in healthcare to ensuring that his vision and the resulting expansion of safe, accessible care today and in the future is a cornerstone of our clinical, educational, research and advocacy work. Reproductive rights are healthcare rights; limitations are rationing of healthcare. In academic medicine, we reserve the right to educate physicians to provide the highest level of care, and abortion provision is part of our core competencies to manage miscarriages, complex pregnancies and patient’s choices in handling their pregnancies. A less skilled and partially trained physician workforce will harm the future reproductive health of our patients and compromise our excellence in care.
As a leader and voice for reproductive justice and access to ensure equitable healthcare for our most vulnerable populations, we are called to advocate, and as such, we plan the following actions:
- Commit to do our part in providing reproductive care to people unable to obtain care in their home states. We have already seen the demand for services from out-of-state patients grow, and we must continue to do everything we can to expand access to meet these patients’ needs. As laws allow us to cover this care, we will step up to meet this need.
- Commit to including abortion care in the educational curriculum across the School of Medicine. With the anticipated increase in demand for care in California and the move to pharmacist-dispensing of mifepristone, there is a need to ensure that all healthcare students receive education on abortion care. Advanced practice clinicians and residents in a range of specialties, including obstetrics and gynecology, family medicine, internal medicine, emergency medicine and pediatrics, all need access to abortion education relevant to their specialty.
- Support state legislation that aims to address this health crisis. Over a dozen bills have been introduced in the California State Legislature this session that would expand access to abortion care, including by providing state funding for people accessing care from out of state
Thank you for your time and your consideration of our perspective on this most important healthcare issue.
Sincerely,
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