Physician and Reproductive Justice Advocate | OB-GYN and Abortion Provider | Founder, Desert Star Institute for Family Planning and Health Justice MD | Author of Undue Burden and Beyond Choice
Who’s Dr. DeShawn Taylor?
Dr. DeShawn Taylor is a board-certified OB-GYN, abortion provider, author, educator, and nonprofit executive whose work sits at the intersection of medicine, reproductive justice, and systems change. She is the founder of Desert Star Institute for Family Planning and Health Justice MD, and the author of Undue Burden and Beyond Choice. With more than two decades of clinical experience and national recognition as a thought leader, Dr. Taylor is known for translating justice from theory into practice through patient care, education, policy engagement, and institution building.
For Dr. DeShawn Taylor, the gap between what the law allows and what people can actually access is not an abstract policy problem. It is something she has witnessed, measured, and confronted in exam rooms for more than two decades. As a board-certified OB-GYN, abortion provider, educator, author, and nonprofit founder, Dr. Taylor has built her career around a clear truth that guides all of her work: a legal right without a functional pathway is not freedom. It is theory. And theory does not care for patients.
What distinguishes Dr. Taylor’s leadership is not only her willingness to name this failure, but her discipline in building what the law never promised. She builds systems that make dignity, bodily autonomy, and care possible in real life.
Medicine, Training, and a Justice Lens
Dr. Taylor’s path into medicine was shaped by rigorous academic training and a deepening awareness of how structural inequities shape health outcomes. She received her medical education at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and completed advanced clinical and research training through the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She went on to complete her obstetrics and gynecology residency at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, an institution grounded in service to historically marginalized communities.
During these formative years, Dr. Taylor came to understand that medical decisions never occur in isolation. Race, class, geography, faith, policy, and power all influence who receives care, when they receive it, and whether that care is delivered with dignity. That understanding became the foundation of her professional identity and the lens through which she would approach every role that followed.
From Clinical Practice to Institution Building
In 2013, Dr. Taylor founded Desert Star Family Planning in Phoenix, Arizona. As a solo physician opening an independent abortion clinic in a hostile political environment, she encountered the limits of traditional healthcare models firsthand. The clinic survived, but survival alone did not address the deeper barriers her patients faced.
She saw patients navigating challenges that extended far beyond medicine, including financial insecurity, lack of transportation, stigma, and criminalization. In response, she founded Desert Star Institute for Family Planning in 2017. The nonprofit expanded the mission beyond clinical services to include provider training, long-acting contraception access for uninsured patients, community education, and policy advocacy. In 2023, Dr. Taylor transitioned the clinic fully into the nonprofit model, securing its future and embedding care within a reproductive justice framework.
Alongside her organizational leadership, Dr. Taylor has spent more than a decade as an Associate Clinical Professor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix. There, she trains medical students to confront bias and center patient autonomy. Through the Desert Star Institute for Family Planning and its Next Generation Abortion Provider Program, medical students and residents have traveled from 21 states and three regions of Canada to Phoenix to learn how to provide abortion care. This training initiative was the primary reason the nonprofit was founded eight years ago. Teaching is not an accessory to her work. It is a core strategy for long-term systems change.
Her leadership also extends into public health governance. She has served in multiple leadership roles with the Arizona Public Health Association, where she currently serves as President-Elect. Across these roles, her message remains consistent: clinicians cannot afford neutrality when policy determines whether care is possible.
Moving Beyond Choice to Practice Justice
Dr. Taylor’s national voice gained prominence through her writing and public engagement. Her first book, Undue Burden: A Black Woman Physician on Being Christian and Pro-Abortion in the Reproductive Justice Movement, challenged dominant narratives around abortion, morality, and faith. Drawing from lived experience and clinical practice, the book reframed the conversation around abortion access through honesty and nuance.
Her most recent work, Beyond Choice: An Essential Workbook for Personal and Community Transformation Through Reproductive Justice, represents a deliberate evolution. Rather than offering theory alone, the workbook provides tools for action. It guides clinicians, advocates, educators, and community leaders from passive agreement into daily practice.
As Dr. Taylor has written, “A legal right without access is just a hollow promise.” The workbook operationalizes that insight by asking readers to examine power, culture, and their own roles within the systems they seek to change.
Through Health Justice MD, Dr. Taylor equips advocate-minded individuals to communicate clearly about abortion, organize strategically, and advance policies rooted in dignity and equity. Her work has been featured by national and international media outlets examining the real-world consequences of abortion bans and healthcare inequity.
Despite her public visibility, Dr. Taylor remains grounded in care delivery. She continues to provide clinical services, mentor future providers, and lead a Black woman-founded institution that has endured political volatility and financial pressure while continuing to expand access.
Vision for the Future: Sustainability, Systems, and Clarity
Dr. Taylor’s vision for the future is rooted in sustainability and accountability. She speaks openly about the necessity of rest, boundaries, and clarity, not as personal indulgences, but as leadership imperatives. Justice work that cannot be sustained, she argues, ultimately fails the communities it claims to serve.
Her long-term goal is to see reproductive justice practiced with the same rigor as medicine itself, supported by infrastructure, training, and shared responsibility. That includes strengthening independent clinics, investing in BIPOC-led organizations, and preparing clinicians to engage policy with competence and courage. As she often reminds her audiences, “Choice was never enough.” What comes next must be built intentionally, collectively, and with honesty about power.
Editorial Note
Dr. DeShawn Taylor is not waiting for the law to catch up to lived reality. She is building the systems people need now, inside clinics, classrooms, communities, and movements. Her work offers a blueprint for what becomes possible when medicine and justice are practiced together.
For readers and leaders navigating this moment, her story poses a direct question: if the law has failed to deliver dignity, what are you willing to build in its place?
