Five Questions with Dara Kass, Emergency Room Physician and Women's Rights Activist

Wednesday night, I promised you we would go deeper into the Idaho abortion case, which I was concerned would get less attention than it deserved in this Trump-heavy environment. So here we are, with my friend Dara Kass, a distinguished emergency medicine physician and the woman you would want to see if you were walking into the ER with a serious emergency. In addition to her chops with patients, she recently finished serving in the Biden Administration as the Regional Director for Region II in the United States Department of Health a Human Services. Before that, she was an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center.

In 2018, Dara became Columbia University Medical Center’s inaugural Director of Equity and Inclusion for the Emergency Department. She is the founder of FemInEM, a platform dedicated to promoting gender equity in emergency medicine. Her career took another turn when the youngest of her three children, Sammy, required a liver transplant on his second birthday. Dara served as Sammy’s living donor, which has led her into advocy on behalf of organ donors.

In a week where Donald Trump seems to have consumed most of the available oxygen, we are so fortunate to have Dara with us to explain the intersection of health care and politics as a compliment to our understanding of the legal proceedings. Cases like this one point to the horrifying potential for women to become second-class citizens, with state legislatures deciding whether they must continue a pregnancy, even one that isn’t viable or that is endangering their health.

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