Labor: One Woman’s Work

Being a medical doctor is inherently physically and mentally challenging, but being an OB-GYN in the post-Roe U.S. brings new stresses of a heightened intensity, particularly for deeply compassionate and empathetic physician Afsari as she shares absorbing stories of her work with patients. She opens the book with her futile attempt to save the victim of a motorcycle accident, an older woman whom she encountered on her way home from work. She recounts guiding a 12-year-old through pregnancy and birth, with a life-threatening postpartum hemorrhage from her immature body. After nearly burning out in her conventional practice, Afsari shifts to a mobile clinic traveling around the Pacific Northwest, from which she helps a lesbian couple conceive. Her stories illustrate the marvelous complexity of the human body and the countless unexpected ways reproductive health can go awry. At the heart of her work is her Iranian heritage and the mystery of her grandmother’s death at a young age during her fifth pregnancy in 1950s Iran. She notes other countries in which contraception is denied and the consequences.