Dispatches from the abortion wars
Subtitle: the costs of fanaticism to doctors, patients, and the rest of us
By: Carole Joffe.
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Boston
Language: eng
Number of pages: 196
ISBN-13: 9780807035023
Subjects: Abortion -- United States; Pro-life movement -- United States; Abortion services -- United States; Abortion, Induced -- psychology -- United States; Health Policy -- United States; Health Services Accessibility -- United States; Politics -- United States; Public Opinion -- United States
Description: From the Publisher: Surprising firsthand accounts from the front lines of abortion provision reveal the persistent cultural, political, and economic hurdles to access. More than thirty-five years after women won the right to legal abortion, stories of limited access to abortion are still familiar; yet most people have little idea of just how inaccessible it has become. While a majority of Americans support safe and legal abortion, the pervasive stigma-cultivated by the religious right-continues to shame women and marginalize abortion providers in their own professional communities. Reproductive-health researcher Carole Joffe has studied abortion provision for more than thirty years. In Dispatches from the Abortion Wars, she relays on-the-ground stories of doctors grappling with the obstacles of providing abortion care for their patients: from skirting draconian state regulations to negotiating with intransigent insurance companies or having to beg superiors for the right to perform medically necessary abortions in-hospital. Joffe brings these examples to vivid life, reporting the lived experiences behind the polemics. Dispatches from the Abortion Wars also offers hope for real change, pointing the way to a more compassionate standard of women's health care-one that responds to the needs of the individual and trusts women to make their own moral choices.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The stigma of abortion; title: You need a community with you : becoming an abortion provider; title: The clinics : ground zero in the abortion wars; title: Regulating abortion; title: Hospital-based abortions : chaos, cruelty, and some accommodation; title: Abortion patients and the "two Americas" of reproductive health; title: Every woman is different : what good abortion care looks like; title: What kind of America do we want?; title: Afterword : abortion is a perfectly proper noun.