Southern Voices: Dr. Staci Tanouye

Southern Voices: A Conversation with Dr. Staci Tanouye

On last week’s episode of Southern Voices, I got to speak with Dr. Staci Tanouye , a Mayo Clinic-trained, board-certified OB-GYN practicing in Jacksonville, Florida, who has also built an audience of more than 1.4 million followers across her social media platforms where she dispels misinformation and promotes body literacy. I wanted to understand what it actually looks like to provide gynecologic care in the most restrictive policy environment in the country, and she did not hold back.

Legislation Entering the Clinic - Patients Centering Decisions on Safety

Unfortunately, I wasn’t surprised with how thoroughly state law has woven itself into her daily practice. “Literally every day in clinic, this comes up in some capacity,” she told me. Nearly every contraception conversation now includes a discussion of what a contraceptive failure would mean under Florida law. And the reach of these restrictions, she emphasized, extends well beyond abortion: “It doesn’t matter if it’s a wanted or an unwanted pregnancy... It permeates everything.”

We spent time on the practical math of Florida’s six-week ban. Because gestational age is counted from the first day of the last menstrual period, a patient with a regular, tracked cycle typically cannot confirm a pregnancy until around four weeks gestation, leaving roughly two weeks to make and act on a life changing decision. She also walked me through something I had no idea about: Florida statute defines trimesters differently than medicine does, a framework she said is “not recognized anywhere in the world of obstetrics.”

Those pressures are showing up in patient choices. After Roe v. Wade was overturned, her practice saw a sharp rise in requests for tubal ligation, mirroring national research showing rates nearly doubled in restrictive states. “A decision based out of fear is very different from a decision based out of empowerment,” she observed.

The Crisis Pregnancy Centers Down the Street

We also dug into crisis pregnancy centers in Florida. Dr. Tanouye described these entities accurately - as unregulated storefronts, often run by nonprofit religious organizations, that present themselves as health clinics without employing licensed medical providers. “Their goal is to stall and to get people beyond the six weeks so that it no longer becomes an option,” she said. She explained the mechanism first: mifepristone, the abortion pill, is essentially an anti-progesterone medication. Early pregnancy needs progesterone to continue, and mifepristone works by blocking the progesterone receptors so “the pregnancy doesn’t get the needed progesterone that it needs, and so it can’t survive.”

The so-called “abortion reversal pill” being promoted by crisis pregnancy centers in your community, is “basically just a large dose of progesterone” given on the theory that you can counteract the anti-progesterone effect by flooding the system with progesterone. Her assessment of that claim was blunt: “There is literally no evidence that this works.”

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She also described how the claim gets dressed up as science. Proponents will cite things like “five people did this and three people are still pregnant and that proves that it works,” and material circulates online referring to “this study” when, in her words, “it’s not really a study. It’s just some anecdotal evidence that was never checked or verified in any way.”

The context she placed it in matters too: CPCs offer this to people in a vulnerable moment with a “you can change your mind, it’s not too late” pitch, which fits the broader delay-and-divert strategy she described, since the centers’ goal is to stall people past Florida’s six-week window.

Underneath all of it is a misinformation landscape she confronts daily, where “misinformation travels faster than factual information.” Her answer is more credentialed voices, not fewer: “There is never enough (repro content creators and advocates)... the more people who are saying good factual information, the wider our reach is going to be.”

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I wrap up every conversation by asking what brings my guests joy. Everyone in this space, whether organizers, providers, advocates, or volunteers, carries heartbreaking stories. In the South especially, there is a high chance of developing learned helplessness; there can be so much stacked against the reproductive justice movement. That is why I like to hear how each guest is finding joy - joy is critical to sustaining this work. When I asked Dr. Tanouye what brings her joy, her answer was two part: 1) the exam room itself, and the long-term relationships she has built with patients who have followed her in her practice 2) taking a step back from social media and being more present with her family (may we all adopt some level of action in number 2 - spoken as a person who is chronically online!).

Why Southern Voices Exists

Dr. Tanouye is an incredible example of why this series exists. She saw a fixable problem, a massive gap in body literacy and reliable reproductive health information, and took action to address it, both in her exam room and online for millions. Southern Voices is built on that same belief: the South and Appalachia are full of people who refuse to accept the way things are, and who are doing the daily work of trying to change them and what it means to be a southerner.

Links Mentioned in the Conversation

1. Where to Find Medical Abortion Clinics in Florida - Ineedana.com

2. Follow the Incredible Work that Dr. Tanouye is Doing - Instagram, Tik Tok, Website