Mayrose Porter was in medical school in Texas when the Dobbs decision was announced and stripped her fellow Texans of their right to access abortion. A life-long Southerner with a penchant for international travel, she went to college in Louisiana and studied public health in Thailand before returning to Houston for her medical degree with a goal of becoming an OB/GYN who could provide complete and socially cognizant reproductive healthcare. A quick year in Scotland to obtain a Master’s in medical anthropology led her to explore the depth to which abortion and pregnancy loss are part of the same continuum, which has informed her now practice as a resident physician in Minnesota.
In this role, she has begun research on abortion access and is specifically focusing on post-abortion contraception. She is proposing a retrospective cohort study to analyze how individuals’ contraception choices have changed with the Dobbs decision, with a specific focus on whether those decisions have changed with respect to how people pay for their abortions, their state of residence, and where they obtain their abortion. Minnesota, a state with expanded access surrounded by red states with abortion restrictions, offers a unique perspective to understand how people engage with contraception in a world where access to abortion is unstable, constantly changing, and potentially criminal.