Dr Leilah Zahedi-Spung always knew providing abortion care in Tennessee was going to be hard, but she probably never could have imagined how hard. On 25 August 2022, 18 months after Zahedi-Spung landed a dream job as a maternal fetal medicine specialist, the state enacted one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, one that does not even make explicit exceptions to save the life of the pregnant person.
Tennessee’s ban makes performing or attempting to perform an abortion a Class C felony – meaning Zahedi-Spung could have faced a 15-year-prison sentence for providing life-saving care. So, in January 2023, she decided to leave for work in Colorado, where abortion is still legal in all stages of pregnancy.
