In the two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, one need not search far to find an example of a pregnant person’s life ruined by strict abortion bans.
Women have beenarrested and charged with murder for having abortions. Others have had to delay inducing labor for a dead fetus, making the miscarriage process even more traumatizing.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court’s Dobbs vs. Jackson decision has made doctors hesitate to provide abortion procedures for fear that they’ll lose their medical licenses, putting their patients at risk.
A new film from sexual and reproductive health care brand Wisp points out the hypocrisy of these bans by showing that they ultimately force doctors to go against the Hippocratic Oath they recite before entering the field, to which they pledge to “first, do no harm.”
Dr. Jillian LoPiano, Wisp’s chief health officer and a practicing OB-GYN in a state with abortion restrictions, said the message holds deeper meaning two years post-Dobbs, because the public has had the time to “understand the very deep, far-reaching and dangerous implications” of the decision.
The film follows a doctor in two scenarios: during his 1995 graduation, when he recites the Hippocratic Oath, and in the present day, as he is forced to turn away a patient seeking an abortion at his Texas clinic.
He hesitates to fill out his notes from the appointment, worried about disclosing that the patient was seeking an abortion upon learning that texts and web searches have been used as prosecutorial evidence.
Viewers then see how, as the woman takes measures into her own hands — searching for care outside of Texas, texting a friend to ask for help driving to an out-of-state facility — the time and cost of finding care ultimately leads to her own suffering. She loses her job and is evicted from her apartment after missing shifts and rent payments.
How is the Texas doctor supposed to do no harm without lying or breaking the law in this scenario? The answer is proven to be impossible as he learns more about the consequences of providing abortion care.
Dr. LoPiano noted the importance of portraying the physician’s internal battle and barriers to providing care. It shows, she said, “how hard this has been as physicians to watch people be harmed, when that’s explicitly what we don’t want.”
“We got into this profession to act, to do, to help people,” she said. “To be so restricted, to not be able to help people, to cause harm when we don’t want to, has been really difficult.”
The film is overlaid with a recitation of the Hippocratic Oath as the woman struggles to seek an abortion, traveling more than 10 hours to the nearest clinic. All the while, she is hounded by rhetoric shaming her for her decision.
Dr. LoPiano noted that including the Oath underlines the importance of depicting abortion as a healthcare procedure. Abortion is “basic, it is routine and it is healthcare — and highlighting it as such is covered under our oath to provide that healthcare is incredibly important.”
No More Hippocrites will be amplified through programmatic display and digital out-of-home media in Atlanta, Phoenix and New York City, as well as through campaign-owned social channels on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
This article originally appeared on Campaign US.
