Dr. Perriera Is Tired of Legislators Dictating Medicine

October 30, 2012

In an interview with Ohio Public Radio, former Leadership Training Initiative Fellow Lisa Perriera, MD, MPH, disputed attempts by anti-abortion extremists to dismiss rape, incest, and the life of the woman as legitimate reasons to have an abortion. The extremists claim that no abortions in Ohio in the last year were performed in cases of rape or a danger to the woman's life, citing Ohio's State Health Department records.

Declared Dr. Perriera, "I have done abortions for patients that have been raped in the past year. I have certainly done abortions for women who have had a threat to maternal life in the past year."

The extremists have called for more detailed abortion reporting in Ohio, an attempt Dr. Perriera sees as another way to place the government between women and the medical care they need. She told the Ohio Public Radio reporter:

"I'm tired of having legislators tell me how I can practice medicine. Last I checked, most of them ... don't sit in the office with me when I have to tell a woman that she has a baby with a fetal anomaly and that baby won't survive but because she has Medicaid, she has to pay for her own abortion or carry that pregnancy to term because of laws that lawmakers have made. They don't have to sit in that room and talk to that woman, but I do and it's exhausting."