I am a full-spectrum family doctor who regularly manages good news and bad news for my patients. I do everything possible to provide the care my patients need. When pregnancies are healthy and desired, I provide prenatal care and deliver the babies, then I care for the family: kids, parents and grandparents.

But not all pregnancies are healthy or well-timed, so I also support my patients as they navigate unexpected challenges, including helping them with miscarriage management or abortion care. I have been taking care of people like this for a long time. In addition to two decades of providing abortion care in Maine, I work around the U.S. and across the world, providing abortions and training others to do the same. As it stands, however, the law in Maine prevents me from providing abortions later in pregnancy to my patients who need them.

I am encouraged that Maine lawmakers are considering legislation that will expand support and protections for abortion care. L.D. 1619, An Act to Improve Maine’s Reproductive Privacy Laws, proposes three important advancements: it allows patients who need abortions later in pregnancy to remain in Maine for their care; it removes criminal penalties attached to abortion care; and it modernizes our state’s data collection to protect the privacy of patients and clinicians like me.

All kinds of people have abortions. Adults and teens, married and unmarried women, rich and poor, educated and illiterate. Abortion happens in all countries, in all religions and in all cultures, regardless of laws or taboos. I have found that pregnant people who seek abortion care later in pregnancy are often those already marginalized by current systems of care: Black, brown and Indigenous women, people living in poverty, non-English speakers, nonbinary and transgender individuals. Delayed detection of a pregnancy in people with bigger bodies or with irregular periods can sometimes postpone care.

Many of my patients facing devastating news about abnormally developing pregnancies await confirmatory testing for fetal anomalies which is generally performed after 16 weeks, pushing any decision about having an abortion later into their pregnancy. All of these are people that we – the medical community and the state’s elected leaders – should be working extra hard to support. Yet, these are the people most impacted by Maine’s current abortion law.

As a scientist, I seek clear logical answers to complex problems. I want data that is irrefutable. As a physician, however, I witness a range of human experience that is nuanced, intensely individualized and often bewildering and inexplicable. The moment we attempt to legislate specifics, especially medical specifics that use imperfect and non-scientific language like “viability,” we begin to create a need for exemptions.

Fetal viability is complex and dependent on a multiplicity of factors: compatibility with eventual life outside the uterus; maternal health and ability to carry a pregnancy to term; accessibility and availability of resources throughout a pregnancy, at the moment of delivery and in the immediate newborn time; and an uncomplicated and safe birth. Since it is impossible to legislate every pregnancy experience, medical professionals must be trusted to use our best judgment. L.D. 1619 will allow us to do that.

Our current law fails patients who need abortion later in pregnancy. This month, Maine lawmakers can change that. We can come together to take care of the people who need our support the most. I urge our elected leaders to act with compassion and pass this bill.