Soon after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Roe v.
Wade abortion ruling in 1973, Laura Esserman used her high school graduation speech to urge her classmates to vote for the Equal Rights Amendment to expand women's access to property, divorce, and abortion. Five decades later, with 14 states banning abortion in almost all circumstances, the University of California-San Francisco breast cancer surgeon has once again taken up the fight for women's reproductive rights. Since 2021, when Texas prohibited most abortions, she has boycotted the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium — a conference she had regularly attended, and frequently headlined, for 34 years.
"People are passing laws that are legislating what should be a medical decision," she said. "And I am objecting in whatever way I can." Esserman and other physicians have urged their colleagues and medical societies to move all professional meetings out of states that criminalize abortion.
Short of a move, they have called for boycotts of the events. In November, Esserman expects 300 health providers and researchers to meet in San Francisco for an alternative breast cancer conference. The effort to move annual conferences — which pump substantial revenue into local communities and attract many of the nation's 1.
1 million physicians and other medical professionals looking to network, satisfy continuing education requirements, and learn about the latest developments in their fields — has led to some notable relocations. T.