Pittsburgh native Dr. David Hackney’s tweet on June 27 gained the attention of a nation.
Hackney is a Cleveland-based maternal-fetal medicine specialist and chair of the Ohio section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and since then he has been doing much more than providing medical care. He’s advocating for patient rights on social media, through published op-eds, through media interviews and by pushing back against laws that are not working for his patients.
But there are no easy answers, and Hackney is among doctors in Ohio who are having to send their patients to Pennsylvania and other states for abortion care. That new role stems from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to nix Roe v. Wade, allowing states to enact a shifting patchwork of restrictions and bans that is nearly as disorienting and wrenching to many providers as it is to patients.
“I feel like the news cycle is ending and we still don’t know what to do,” Hackney told PublicSource.