Why I Will NEVER Stop Fighting for Women’s Healthcare

One of my favorite anecdotes to share in STEM job interviews is how my dad named me and my siblings after DNA. My scientist father named us Carolyn, Tessa, Graham, and Aydin - after the four base pairs of DNA (CTGA). If you want to get all technical about it, I am the cytosine of my family’s double helix.

But there is another, much more personal, part of my name’s origin that I do not typically talk about. While the “C” in my name represents the cytosine of my family chain, the name “Carolyn” has a much deeper meaning to me and my family.

A few years before I was born, my mom’s best friend Carol died suddenly at the age of 30. Her doctors prescribed her a medication that she had a known allergy to. She died of an allergic reaction to this prescription, leaving behind two young children and a grieving husband.

My mother, who was in her early 20s at the time, dropped out of college to help raise these children. She had me only a few years into this, and didn’t wind up going back to college until she was almost 40.

To say that Carol’s death drastically changed the course of our lives is an understatement. To say that it changed the course of her family’s lives barely scratches the surface of their experience.

When I was growing up, I would always have to go to their family gatherings and get paraded around as “the namesake.” Although this wasn’t the easiest experience for me as a child, it did teach me how much Carol meant to so many people. How different their worlds were without her light.

I started my undergraduate degree at UVA when I was just 16, and I wound up double majoring in biology and English. I ultimately began a career in biomedical communications, editing and writing for journals like Nature and drug companies like Janssen.

Over the past 15 years, I have dedicated myself to the fight for healthcare equity in this field. I advocated tirelessly for gender-inclusive language in the medical industry. I raised awareness on how the lack of inclusivity in our language translates into negative healthcare outcomes for so many Americans.

My father has been an NSF advisor for years, and he is currently a senior researcher and advisor with the ORAU.

Considering what I know about my father, I was less than surprised by the current administration’s ban on words for NSF funding proposals.

You see, I have legal protection from my mother, and I have not spoken to either of my parents in nearly 7 years now. They do not accept me for my sexuality, my feminism, or my independence as a woman. And I do not accept them.

As far as I know, I am the first woman in my entire family lineage to have the level of education I do and to have supported myself independently without a husband.

My mother tried to stop me from going to UVA at 16, claiming that I was “too young” and “inexperienced” (I was homeschooled in an isolated religious community - read, cult - until the 8th grade).

However, I got into UVA on my own merit, and I did not allow my age to deter me from pursuing freedom from my family and the religious community they surround themselves with. I certainly do not recommend going to college at 16, but it was my escape - and I don’t regret it.

I know perfectly well that I am a source of shame and disappointment to my family. My parents told me as much. My mother’s exact words on this issue? That I represent her “failure to God as a Christian mother.”

My parents are also as homophobic and pro-life as it comes. My mother literally told me, many times, that any woman who goes to have an abortion should be forcibly sterilized against her will. Why? Because she doesn’t deserve to have children, obviously.

Even without my family’s support, I managed to get a job as the sole copy editor for Nature Methods when I was only 24 years old. I have spent the last 15 years working in biomedical communications, most recently for a biomedical communications agency.

When I saw the news about the NSF language ban, I cannot say I was surprised. Given what I know about the people who make these decisions (like my father), I knew perfectly well this was just a matter of time.

People thought I was crazy for years, ranting on and on about the attacks on minority healthcare in the US.

But unfortunately I am extremely sane, and I was right all along. Just because the attacks have been less blatant up until now, that doesn’t mean they haven’t been happening all this time.

And now, the future of my own career hangs in the balance. I have so much empathy for everyone being laid off as a result of the current administration’s changes.

Looking at the US job market now, I fail to see how I will be able to get any job in my chosen field. Given the fact that my entire career was built around healthcare equity, I do not think anyone will hire me now to work in STEM. At least not in this country.

I have worked abroad before, teaching English and conducting research, so I am seriously considering applying for jobs overseas.

But at the same time, leaving America now would devastate me. As much sorrow as I feel for our nation, I do not want to abandon this country in this moment. I do not want to waste my education and my skills, and I do want to continue to fight for healthcare equity in the US.

But to say that I am devastated doesn’t even come close to describing how I feel right now.

At the same time, I feel vindicated in my assessment of my parents. I know now I was right to take off so young, and my instincts that I was not safe with my parents were correct.

My father has never cared about women’s healthcare, women’s safety, minority rights, etc. And I have long maintained that if my father is one of the people in charge of our nation’s biomedical industry, we should all be terrified.

And what I think my mother failed to understand is that her ongoing support of my father and the conservative Christian agenda was not only a betrayal of me, her wayward daughter. It was also a betrayal of her one-time best friend, of the woman she named her first-born child after.

The people and ideologies she dedicated herself to are the same exact people and communities responsible for Carol’s death.

Deprioritizing women’s healthcare can only have one result - our deaths.

How many more children will be left motherless now? How many men left as grieving single dads? How many more families will be ripped apart by pain?

I know how the people making these administrative changes think. Because, for better or worse, they raised me. And I am painfully aware of the logical fallacies that underpin their false sense of righteousness and moral rectitude.

If my parents didn’t care about women’s healthcare rights, then why did they name their eldest daughter after a victim of medical malpractice? Why did my mother raise me not to trust doctors, but to look up every medication and potential interactions on my own?

And why did they abandon this daughter, not even checking if she was alive during COVID lockdown?

I feel increasingly that I do not just understand these logical fallacies, but I actually represent them. I literally embody them, in my person and in my name.

My parents have always acted ashamed of me, for my identity and my choice to pursue a life outside Christian housewifery.

But now, I can say without reservations that it is I who am ashamed. Ashamed of a father who abandons his daughter. Ashamed of parents who claim to believe in Jesus, yet who have not modeled his behavior a single day in their lives.

If people like my father continue to be allowed to make administrative decisions like this, our country will continue to spiral into ruin.

But I am not ready to abandon this nation just yet. Although I do not believe in our government, I do believe in our people. There is so much good in the American people, so much compassion.

We cannot stand down now. We cannot allow this administration to throw away our futures without putting up a fight.

And I cannot, will not, sit back passively and watch our healthcare system crumble. To do so would be a betrayal of myself, and of the woman I was named after.

Cutting DEI initiatives and censoring grant proposals will not just affect racial minorities or the LGBTQ+ community. It puts the lives of every single woman in this country at risk.

Carol died over 3 decades ago due to medical malpractice. And many more women will die, are dying, now.

Although I admit that I feel scared about my future, about my ability to support myself, that fear is nothing compared to what I feel for my people - the American people.

But fear has never stopped me before, and it won’t stop me now. Today is the day for all of us to come together against the powers that be. Not just because it is the “right” thing to do, but because it is quite literally a matter of survival.