Standing with and for My Patients: Art and Activism

Photo: We Must Speak for the Voiceless and Vulnerable by Retired Colonel Alicia Christy, MD, MHSCR, FACOG.

When I was demonstrating against apartheid in my twenties, I never thought I would be demonstrating to protect reproductive rights and voting rights in my sixties. My artwork is my voice for social justice in a world of inequity and polarization. I have written about my history of activism through art in A Legacy of Activism and Art and Activism: Creating Space as a Form of Resistance, my previous Black History Month submissions to ACOG.

In my artist statement, We Must Speak for the Voiceless and Vulnerable, I described the imperative for physicians to advocate for their patients. Voter suppression, which will only serve to worsen health disparities, was the inspiration for my watercolor painting Why I Vote: The Ethical Obligation to Promote Voter Engagement to Achieve Health Equity. My watercolor artwork, COVID Tears, reflected the inequities in care experienced during the pandemic. The tragic result of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision will be the needless deaths of far too many, which motivated me to paint Women Will Die as a Result of the Dobbs Decision was posted on Twitter and featured in an American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology newsletter. My artwork was also featured in the VA Health Equity Art Gallery inaugural exhibition, titled Responding to Social Justice and Equity. This online exhibit included artwork related to topics I feel passionately about: health equity, racial justice, climate justice, the treatment of immigrant children, and the war in Ukraine. More recently I painted a piece titled Hate Hurts Everyone, which was inspired by the events in Gaza.

I have had the privilege of caring for active-duty servicewomen and women veterans for more than 30 years. In addition to providing them with care, I use my artwork to honor them. My series of portraits, Faces of the Fallen: Women Proudly Served, is a tribute to women who lost their lives in service to our country. I share these paintings as broadly as I can in order to honor the subjects and to tell their stories. My portraits were on display at Dulles airport and the Library of Congress and will be on display at Reagan airport. I have also written about my commitment to recognizing women veterans for ACOG previously. As the former VA liaison to ACOG’s Committee on Advancing Equity in Obstetric and Gynecologic Health Care, I had an opportunity to advocate for active-duty service women and veterans with the College.

I am looking forward to my next chapter as a physician activist. Our patients desperately need our advocacy; we cannot fail them.

Alicia Christy, MD, FACOG, is an ACOG member, retired army physician, activist, and watercolor artist. After her retirement in 2023 she joined the veteran artist group Uniting US, a nonprofit that empowers and inspires veterans and their families and helps them heal through art, and continued her work as an advocate for active duty and veterans with ACOG and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

The 2024 theme for Black History Month is African Americans and the Arts. This year, we hope to give a platform to art made by Black members of the ACOG community. We’d also love to hear from ACOG members about works by African American artists that have inspired you or that have particular meaning in your life and career. Email [email protected] to share a story in the form of a written essay, visual art, or a video.