What moving from Kentucky to Virginia after I was diagnosed with cancer reveals about Roe
Supporters of the end of Roe pretend that abortion access can be surgically extracted from women’s health care decision-making as a whole.
After years of teaching Roe v. Wade as a family law professor, I experienced the stunningly painful irony of reading the leaked Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on the day I was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. Overnight, at age 44, I became a person who would need an abortion if pregnant because cancer treatments would compromise a healthy birth and delay needed cancer care. I also became someone, like other hormone-positive breast cancer patients, who was advised to discontinue hormonal contraception because it might stimulate the growth of cancer cells.
In the aftermath of Roe’s being overturned, supporters of the move want to pretend that abortion access can be surgically extracted from women’s health care decision-making as a whole. Nothing could be further from the truth.
When I was diagnosed with cancer, the last things on my mind were pregnancy, birth control and abortion. Yet nearly all my medical appointments, tests and surgery itself were predicated on controlling reproduction and being able to terminate a pregnancy if needed.
Since the Dobbs leak, which had made it clear what the conservative-leaning court was poised to do, I have switched gears rapidly between being a reproductive rights scholar and a breast cancer patient. I also switched employment from Kentucky to Virginia. At a time when a woman’s constitutional right to bodily autonomy has been stripped away, this move across state lines — and into a different area of women’s health care — has revealed a searing reality: We now live in a world of vastly divergent health care systems for women.
As a breast cancer patient in Northern Virginia, I have thankfully found unbounded compassion, empathy, dignity, privacy and vitalizing human connection. I’ve been supported by patient’s rights advocates, counselors, cancer patient support groups and a multitude of local health care providers. I’ve been buoyed by the lived experiences of survivors and their caregivers, who’ve catalyzed their own hardships toward walking empathetically alongside others. This support infrastructure treats me as part of a larger ecosystem that informs my decision-making.
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