I'm an abortion provider in a red state. It shouldn't be my job to interrogate patients who need reproductive healthcare.

• DeShawn Taylor is an ob-gyn in Phoenix, Arizona, where she's been fighting restrictions for years.
• Her clinic provides reproductive healthcare to some of the city's most underserved populations.
• These are her thoughts on the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade, as told to writer Cari Shane. 

Dr. DeShawn Taylor is an OB-GYN who owns Desert Star Family Planning in Phoenix, Arizona. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

I am outraged. 

While I had prepared myself for this reality, I had an emotional response to the leaked draft of the Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the ruling that guarantees the right to an abortion, that I didn't expect: I was angry and distressed.

Abortion bans harm all pregnant people. The leaked opinion is especially egregious because it appears it wouldn't even make an exception for maternal health.

Even prior to the leak, we've been living with a lot of abortion restrictions in Arizona

We have a 24-hour forced waiting period. We require notarized parental consent for minors. There's a pre-Roe law banning abortion that's been on the books since the early 1900s; last year legislators repealed the portion that criminalized people who get abortions but left in the criminalization of the abortion provider. 

There's a very high likelihood that after the official Supreme Court decision, abortion will be illegal in Arizona. It's not a trigger-law state, so it wouldn't happen immediately, but it would likely happen. 

Recently, we've been fighting a state law that bans abortion after 15 weeks. There is no exception for rape, incest, or maternal health. When the governor passed the ban, there was a fever pitch of patients calling in concerned; they didn't understand that it wasn't enforceable immediately. (It will take effect later this summer.)

The same thing happened within an hour of the Supreme Court leak.

I purposely established my clinic in one of Phoenix's socioeconomically disadvantaged and underserved areas

So many people here don't have the financial means to continue a pregnancy. We have immigrants, documented and undocumented; asylum seekers; people who are addicted to drugs. What overturning Roe would do is create a situation where the people who are already the most marginalized are forced to continue pregnancies that further a cycle that harms their ability to survive and thrive — and a situation in which people may die.

Although abortion opponents don't like to talk about it, our country has the highest maternal-mortality rate of any developed nation. And there's growing evidence that states with the most abortion restrictions also have the highest maternal-mortality rates.

I always remind people that a pregnant person is not making the decision to have an abortion in a vacuum

They're weighing so many factors, including caring for other children. Sometimes it's a financial decision. Sometimes it's a mental-health decision. Sometimes situations change — they have a partner who leaves them and as a single parent they don't have the financial resources to provide for a child.

I arrived in Arizona when Janet Napolitano was the Democratic governor. After she left in 2009 to become the secretary of homeland security, lawmakers began passing several omnibus anti-abortion bills. They have passed a restriction each legislative season since then except for one. (They'd passed such bills under Napolitano too, but she had been vetoing them since 2003.)

I got very involved in grassroots activism to help people in my community understand the urgency of the moment.

Education is key: As far as I can tell, the average Arizonan doesn't know what Roe v. Wade is 

I honestly think the average American doesn't know what Roe v. Wade is. We need to talk about this so people understand that their constitutional right to abortion care is at stake. 

The abortion pill misoprostol is safe, but it doesn't always work. That means we're going to see more people coming to the clinic with what looks like a miscarriage. (About 20% of pregnancies are lost within the first 12 weeks.) I'm not going to provide an illegal abortion, but it's not my job to investigate or interrogate a pregnant person if they show up bleeding.

We are not an extension of the state

It is not our job to investigate how someone showed up in the clinic bleeding and with a fetus without a heartbeat. Our role as healthcare providers is to provide care. It was very distressing to learn that a hospital staffer called the police on a young woman in Texas accused of self-inducing an abortion. I want to collaborate with folks to make sure we are creating a safe space for patients who can come to us — because they're going to be afraid to go to hospitals.

I will continue working with community members and legislators to design methods for harm reduction, to ensure that Arizonans get the care they need should the Supreme Court overturn Roe. It's going to be a dark moment for a while. It's going to harm a lot of people. It will be daunting. But the pendulum will swing back, and we will begin to repair the damage that the decision will cause.

With this decision looming, we're in limbo. Until we have the final decision, I want people to understand that abortion is still legal in Arizona right now.