Recently, during a routine doctor’s appointment for one of my children, the physician’s assistant paused as we walked out and said, “I’m a big fan of you and your husband, Seth’s, writing.” It caught me off guard. As conservative writers, our work is often contentious, and being recognized in a clinical setting was a new and slightly disorienting experience.
I say I’ve never been recognized in a medical setting before, but the truth is, I’m not so sure. Years ago, when I was pregnant with one of my children, I used a midwife practice that initially felt warm and supportive. However, toward the end of my first trimester, the demeanor of the primary midwife in the practice abruptly shifted. Once friendly, she became distant and cold. At a group meeting toward the end of my pregnancy, attended by other women due around the same time, that same midwife made a snide comment implying that I was heartless. It felt like the final confirmation of what I had begun to suspect: she had looked me up, realized I was a conservative writer, and had started treating me accordingly.
I was due on July 1st, but made a conscious effort to deliver early when she was scheduled to be out of the country. After a few aggressive laps in our local pool in late June, my water broke, and I gave birth a week early, with one of her assistants attending. It was a relief. While that experience was uncomfortable, my greater fear has always been this: what happens when political bias in medicine doesn’t just result in cold shoulders but in compromised care for my children?
That fear no longer feels hypothetical.
Earlier this week, a Houston-area pediatrician, Dr. Christina B. Propst, was fired by Blue Fish Pediatrics after she posted a Facebook message politicizing a horrific tragedy. Following deadly flash floods in Kerr County, Texas, which killed more than 80 people, including children at Camp Mystic, Dr. Propst wrote a post expressing sympathy only for “non-MAGA voters and pets,” and saying of the rest, “may they get what they voted for.” The backlash was swift. Blue Fish issued a statement condemning her remarks and announced that she was no longer employed at the practice.
This wasn’t Propst’s first foray into political provocation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she made headlines for organizing an open letter blaming Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) for the Houston COVID-19 surge, calling his pushback against lockdowns “dangerous.” Crenshaw responded to her recent comments on X, saying, “This was the same vile ‘doctor’ who tried to cancel me during COVID.”
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the merger of politics and medicine in many ways. During the pandemic, physicians and medical ethicists publicly debated whether it was acceptable to deny care to unvaccinated patients. In some places, health policies came to resemble ideological litmus tests more than science-based protocols. For those of us who were already wary of political encroachment into medicine, the pandemic didn’t just validate our concerns; it magnified them.
Propst’s political zeal wasn’t limited to her Facebook posts. Kimberly Pina, the mother of a longtime patient at Blue Fish Pediatrics and a Trump voter, told the Washington Examiner that she had begun to feel uncomfortable with the clinic’s COVID-19 protocols and vaccine pressure. “We’ve been patients with Blue Fish for more than 15 years, but never saw Dr. Propst,” she said. “However, during and after the pandemic, the practice began implementing protocols we didn’t agree with, forcing us to wait outside in the hall since we didn’t want to wear masks. We haven’t been to the office for any visits since.”
Pina also noted that her regular pediatrician had become increasingly insistent about vaccines she had previously declined. The final straw, she said, was Propst’s Facebook post. “This incident … was the nail in the coffin.” The family plans to transfer their care to another provider in the area.
Other doctors have also taken notice. One physician, who preferred to remain anonymous, summed up the irony: “She obviously cannot recognize her own bias but likely goes to [medical] conferences telling people to recognize their own microaggressions and unconscious bias.” It’s a devastating observation, and a painfully accurate one. The medical world is saturated with buzzwords like “inclusion,” “equity,” and “cultural competency.” However, those principles are nowhere to be found when it comes to patients with different political views.
Medical care is an intimate act. It requires trust. Parents entrust physicians with the health of their children, our most precious responsibility. To see someone in that role express such overt contempt for a political group that represents a large share of the population, and likely her patient base, is horrifying. It’s not just unprofessional; it’s dangerous.
Political bias in medicine is not just a fringe concern. It’s becoming systemic.
In my 2023 book, Stolen Youth, co-authored with Karol Markowicz, we explored how pediatric care, like many other institutions, has been increasingly influenced by left-leaning ideology. Pediatrics ranks among the top three most liberal medical specialties, along with psychiatry and epidemiology, according to a 2016 study. Only 32% of pediatricians and 24% of psychiatrists identify as Republicans, compared to 67% of general surgeons and 65% of anesthesiologists. Younger physicians are overwhelmingly Democratic, which has had enormous downstream effects, especially in how pediatricians address topics such as gender identity, vaccination, and mental health.
This isn’t a blanket condemnation of liberal doctors, far from it. There are plenty of liberal physicians who are compassionate, professional, and ethical. But the data reveals a trend, and the behavior of doctors like Dr. Propst makes clear that some medical professionals are letting their politics overtake their professionalism.
This erosion of trust has consequences. Parents like me are now left wondering if a pediatrician will secretly resent us for our beliefs. Will they be less attentive to our children? Will they dismiss our concerns, or worse, act on their biases? These are not abstract fears. When a doctor publicly says she only cares about the children of “non-MAGA voters,” she’s saying the quiet part out loud.
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For now, Dr. Propst’s firing is an example of accountability. But how many more doctors like her are still treating patients, quietly harboring disdain for families who don’t share their worldview? How many parents are second-guessing their provider, unsure if they’re walking into a medical office or a political battleground?
Healthcare should be a refuge from our culture wars, not another front in them. We can, and must, demand more from those we entrust with our families’ care. The stakes are too high to settle for anything less.
