It's a clean sweep -- three ballot initiatives on abortion, three victories for women's health. Despite the anti-abortion movement's best efforts, Americans in three states voted to protect pregnant women and their physicians from interference by the government. Weeks -- no, months -- of stress and worry melted away as the votes came in Tuesday night. I am so relieved that voters chose privacy and empathy, science and medicine, over anti-choice scare tactics and misplaced ideology. 

Together with Barack Obama's decisive win, the outcomes of the ballot initiatives give us hope for the future of Americans' reproductive health. We can use our momentum to work with our pro-choice president-elect on repairing the damage done to reproductive rights over the past eight years. Imagine a country where we don't have to constantly defend the existence of abortion and contraception, where we can dedicate our energy instead to guaranteeing comprehensive reproductive healthcare for all! 

I practice in California, where Proposition 4 would have required notification of a minor's parents if she needed an abortion. This was the third time in four years that we've battled similar initiatives. While most teens do involve their parents when faced with a pregnancy, we have fought to protect the health of those who can't or won't. 

I volunteer at clinics where I see pregnant teens. Some have abusive parents, are estranged from their families, or have other good reasons why parental notification could be risky for them. To make Proposition 4 more palatable to voters than its predecessors, its authors included exceptions for girls like my patients. But teens could not take advantage of these exceptions unless they either stated in writing that their parents abused them or took themselves to court. With my fellow members of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, I explained to voters that the exceptions would hurt the very minors they were designed to protect. They listened. 

As we had in the campaigns against the previous initiatives, we also told Californians that many teens, regardless of their family situations, depend on confidential reproductive healthcare and would not see a doctor without it. 

The voters said no to parental notification for the third time, 52% against to 48% in favor. Unfortunately, California is not the only state to consider a mandate of parental involvement for abortion. Thirty-four states already require either parental notification or parental consent. We must continue to teach the public and our legislators about the importance of providing adolescents both medically accurate sex education and access to confidential reproductive healthcare. 

The people behind Amendment 48 in Colorado wanted to place the government inside every pregnant woman's body, treating zygotes as people with rights. This absurd initiative would have jeopardized abortion, contraception, fertility treatments, in vitro fertilization, and the rights of pregnant women. The voters responded by thrashing this measure, 73% against to 27% in favor. Without a doubt, a woman has the right to determine the status of a blastocyst inside her own uterus. Here, too, Americans picked science and medicine over government intrusion into women's health. 

In South Dakota, the danger to women's health was even more concrete. Initiated Measure 11 would have prohibited all abortions in the state with exceptions only for rape, incest, and a serious threat to the woman's health. Even women who qualified for exceptions, however, would have had a difficult time getting an abortion under this law. As the South Dakota section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists noted, the health exceptions under  Measure 11 were "ambiguous and unworkable" for physicians and the women they care for. ACOG stated, "This ban puts the physician in the unthinkable position of either treating her in a medically appropriate fashion and being prosecuted as a criminal, or not treating appropriately and not only facing claims of negligence but, worse, seeing her suffer." 

Like Proposition 4 in California, the proponents of Measure 11 created these so-called exceptions to mollify voters, who rejected a total ban on abortion in 2006. If they won, Measure 11's masterminds hoped to provoke a lawsuit that they could use to challenge Roe. But they lost -- the voters of South Dakota came through for us all. I am delighted that they've protected not only their own mothers, daughters, and sisters, but all women in the U.S. 

In October, I spent four days in Sioux Falls, Rapid City, and a blizzardy South Dakota plain in between. I volunteered with doctors, medical students, and other dedicated advocates as they tirelessly campaigned against this awful initiative. We educated South Dakotans with medical facts about abortion and shared the stories of women who needed the procedure. Our voices managed to overcome the ugly words of a vocal anti-choice opposition-like the parade of doctors in a disturbing TV ad, who implored people to vote yes on Measure 11 in order to "stop the use of abortion as birth control." 

The Campaign for Healthy Families succeeded -- South Dakota soundly rejected the measure and its virtual ban on abortion by a ten-point margin: 55% against and 45% in favor. 

Still, abortions in South Dakota are hard to come by, with just one clinic in the state and a 24-hour mandatory delay -- as if women hadn't thought about their decision before they drove five hours to the clinic. This reality of scarce, restricted abortion care in South Dakota reflects the situation in many parts of the U.S. Over the next four years, we must try to build equity in reproductive healthcare access, so that women everywhere can obtain the services they need.  

As a physician, an activist, and a citizen, yesterday's election has brought me joy. I am deeply grateful to every person who fought against the anti-choice ballot initiatives, giving voters medical, scientific, and humane reasons for preserving women's right to abortion. Americans in three very different states all agree that the government has no place in the consultation between a pregnant woman and her doctor.