Oge Young, MD lives in Concord.

Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony regarding four reproductive rights bills. One of those bills, CACR 24, would amend the NH Constitution (if passed by the Legislature and ratified by voters in November) to provide that all persons have the right to make their own reproductive decisions.

My older partner was a staunch, politically conservative Republican. Just out of training, looking for an OB/GYN practice, I showed up in Concord with my wife, Pam, and our three sons. He smiled and told me how glad he was to see how badly I needed a job! We shook hands on a starting salary of $35,000 and I have been grateful ever since. It was a privilege to practice with such a beloved physician in our community. His career lasted 50 years.

He deeply respected women. I suspect that respect started from watching his mother raise five sons as a young widow in Barre, Vermont. His father died of lung disease, like so many men working in granite quarries. My partner was only six. He remembers his mom “buying a broom and riding it hard.”

He attended the University of Vermont on a scholarship where he lived with the Episcopal Diocese. He was a devout Christian and remained a devout Christian all his life. When St. Paul’s Church sanctuary burned to the ground in April 1984, my partner spent much of his time and treasures to rebuild it. He cherished his church.

After college, he completed medical school at UVM, interned for a year, and then served two years as an ‘obstetrician’ at Loring Air Force Base in Maine. He loved caring for women and delivering their babies, so he chose to train for four more years as an OB/GYN specialist at Women’s Hospital in New York City.

It was there, during the late 1950s, that he watched many young women die from overwhelming infection after illegal, back alley, botched abortions. Some of those women left children at home as orphans.

My partner realized clearly that abortions must be safe and legal. He argued that women will always desperately seek abortion care, whether it is legal or illegal. The unnecessary deaths he witnessed during his training left a mark on his heart, mind and soul. It was plain to him that abortions should only be performed by skilled physicians under sterile conditions. The U.S. Supreme Court Roe v. Wade landmark decision in 1973 was a great relief.

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Besides delivering thousands of babies, days and nights, he provided safe abortion care in our office at Concord Hospital and at The Feminist Health Center (now Equality Health Center). Motivated by what he had experienced during his training, he stayed intent on making a woman’s decision not to carry a pregnancy private and safe.

I often asked him how he could vote for a Republican candidate who openly opposed abortion. His answer was always the same. “Abortion care is not a political issue. Abortion is about health care, safe health care for women.” Few knew better. His feelings never wavered, even when protesters threatened him at our office and at his home.

He would be appalled that politics crept into the judicial branch of our democracy when the U.S. Supreme Court Dobb’s decision overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. He would find it hard to believe that after 50 years, the right to privacy and safety in deciding about a woman’s health, her family and her future has been taken away.

He knew that the decision to terminate a pregnancy is deeply personal, one that deserves to remain with each woman and her care provider. That medicine is about caring for human beings, not about politics and ideology. He believed that everything we can do to give women control of their bodies and their fertility enhances their health and their freedom, and changes the world for the better.

I urge our legislators and the people of New Hampshire to support CACR 24, an amendment to the NH Constitution that would enshrine for women the right to an abortion.