Frequently Asked Questions
- Why focus on abortion?
Women's ability to make decisions about their reproductive lives is deeply connected to their ability to exercise self-determination. Abortion is one of the ways that women achieve this, especially when other methods are denied or fail.
Because of its unique place on the continuum of methods, abortion will always be a critical piece of a broader approach to women's health and autonomy. As one of the most publicly politicized and stigmatized options for women, it is also one of the most difficult and fragile.
International experience as well as the pre-Roe experience in this country shows that women will seek to terminate unwanted pregnancies regardless of legality. Ensuring that abortion is accessible and safe contributes to an environment in which women and girls can be their strongest, safest, healthiest and most fully-realized selves.
- If abortion is legal, why is it difficult to access?
Despite abortion being both safe and legal in the U.S., many women experience significant hardships and delays obtaining an abortion: putting off rent or other necessities, taking medically unnecessary time away from work and family, and experiencing stigma and isolation from social and medical systems of support. Restrictive laws such as a state-mandated waiting period can delay the care a woman needs for up to 48 hours, especially challenging when a woman has traveled to seek care.
Ensuring the legal ability to provide access safe abortion is critical. However, there are many factors beyond laws that make it difficult for a woman to get the medical care she needs. Available abortion services are made possible by health care providers: doctors in clinics, primary care physicians, nurse practitioners, nurse-midwives, physician's assistants, and nurses. Whether offering abortion care or simply dispensing knowledgeable, unbiased referrals, the medical community is the lynchpin of access.
Those providing abortion services, more often than not, do not get enough support and future clinicians do not get the training and education they need. Politically motivated laws aimed at abortion providers place medically unnecessary regulations on these healthcare professionals and their facilities, adding additional barriers. Nor is abortion care considered part of mainstream healthcare, despite the fact that one out of every three women in the U.S. will have one by the time she reaches the age of 45.
The hardships many American women face result in part from the fact that millions of women in the U.S. live in areas or are served by health care systems that do not provide abortion care or even have adequate systems of referral - a situation that is becoming worse as the availability of abortion services continues to decline. Training and support to engage clinicians is critical.
- Are there specific groups of women who have trouble accessing abortion?
Any woman may find herself struggling to access abortion care. Accessing abortion is particularly difficult for rural women -- 97% of non-metropolitan U.S. counties have no abortion provider -- and for low-income women, who experience significantly longer delays that can result in later, more risky, more expensive, and harder to obtain procedures. Access to abortion can also be constricted depending on what state a woman lives in, as the availability of abortion services is becoming increasingly state specific. Young women also must face greater barriers, often blocked from care by restrictive laws and limited resources. For all these women, poor access can result in delayed or denied abortion care.
Many women who face barriers to abortion also lack access to contraception and other methods of prevention. When contraception fails or is denied because of income or location, accessible abortion services are critical to maintaining women's health and autonomy. Although women's experience can vary greatly by income and socioeconomic status, women's need for accessible, safe abortion services exists regardless of being rich or poor, living in a city of half a million or a town of five hundred, or hailing from California or Kentucky.
- What can I do to improve access?
Get involved! This can mean learning more about the issue, organizing in your community, or supporting our work. If you are a health professional or in training to be one, you have a unique opportunity to help women access the services they need. AAP can help you make the practical steps necessary to help ensure the medical community consistently offer women abortion care.
- How can I learn more about abortion access?
Educating yourself and others about the importance of safe abortion and barriers to access is a great way to support accessible services. Explore AAP's fact sheets, organizing kit, resources, and links. Register with us to access a wealth of in-depth resources. Understanding the problem and the strategies to solve them is the perfect foundation to create change.
- Why is competence in abortion care important?
Training in abortion care at the very least ensures that you are able to be a knowledgeable resource for your patients. At most, it can mean becoming a trusted and valued abortion provider, supporting women's health and autonomy by addressing an underserved medical need. Half of all pregnancies in the U.S. unintended and one in three women in the U.S. will have an abortion by the age of 45; your involvement is needed to ensure women have access the quality care they deserve.
- How can I be trained?
The availability of abortion training will depend on several factors including if you are a student, resident, or practicing clinician, your previous training, your specialty, and where you live and practice. Ob-Gyn residency programs are required by Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education to provide access to experience with induced abortion as part of residency education. Other residency programs may also offer training in abortion. Click here for a list of family medicine residencies that offer abortion training (link to RHEDI). If you are a medical student, Medical Students for Choice is an excellent resource to connect you to education and training.
If you are no longer a resident or if your residency program doesn't offer abortion training, there are other opportunities. Trainings are being organized across the country to teach you the skills you need, often offering Continuing Medical Education credits. AAP provides tailored support to practitioners and residents interested in abortion and may be able to connect you to an opportunity in your area. We welcome inquiries from everyone from residents to clinicians more advanced in their career.
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- Why include abortion care in my practice?
Unintended pregnancy is by nature not anticipated, highlighting many unknowns. Women seek information about their healthcare options, often turning to a clinician they trust like their primary care physicians. The ability to give your patient the information she needs confidently and without bias is critical for any clinician. The ability to provide your patient with care she needs whatever she decides is an even greater step towards comprehensive care. Because of the stigma and political hostility that often surrounds a women's decision to terminate a pregnancy, receiving abortion care from a known clinician in a familiar office can make a significant difference in a patient's experience. With these services made more accessible through your practice, more women can truly make a choice about their pregnancy.
Including abortion care in your practice can also benefit other services women need, especially miscarriage management. Certain procedures used in abortion care have multiple uses. By learning these skills, your ability to manage complications, such as ectopic pregnancies, early fetal demise and bleeding can also improve.
Proficiency in abortion care and its inclusion in your practice allow you to provide more comprehensive care to your patients as well as improve access to these services. Your ability to provide abortion care will help address this underserved need and be invaluable to women.
- How can I integrate abortion care into my practice?
Integrating abortion care into your practice goes beyond developing the skills to provide. There are many models for delivering abortion care, establishing which will work best in your practice is an important decision. AAP works directly with many providers to help them navigate through everything from ordering medicines to billing. We help new providers gain support among staff and colleagues and connect them to other abortion providers in their state or area. We can also connect new providers to other professional resources and associations.
- Why is competence in abortion care important?
One in three women will have an abortion by the age of 45. APCs will most likely encounter abortion or abortion-related needs in their practice. Because of this reality, all providers must have the skills and background to provide safe and high quality care, whether counseling and referring or providing services.
While the ability of APCs to perform abortions is subject to location and, most of all, the capabilities and interests of the healthcare professional, APCs play an important role in the lives of their patients. For that reason, the ability to knowledgably discuss abortion care as well as the ability to provide abortion services is an important part of providing those patients with high quality care.
- How can I be trained?
While currently there are no national training centers for APCs, local opportunities exist depending on your state and interest. AAP works with individual APCs on a case by case basis, providing tailored support and training where possible, and may be able to connect you with a training opportunity in your area. If you are a clinician within the Planned Parenthood network, there are often opportunities for training available through your affiliate. AAP also works with state-level partners to create sustainable training opportunities for APCs with other clinical affiliations.
- How can I integrate abortion care into my practice?
AAP can direct you to information about how state laws and the rules and regulation of boards of nursing and the board of medicine affect your practice. In addition, AAP works with individual APCs on a case by case basis, providing tailored support and training where possible, and may be able to connect you with a training opportunity in your area. We are also able to provide support for issues such as billing and coding, the development of ultrasound skills, and referral practices.
- What resources would be helpful to me?
AAP offers specific resources for physician's assistants, nurse practitioners and certified nurse-midwives. For more information about abortion care in your profession, please log in, free of charge, to our network member site. Also, feel free to peruse our collection of resources, as well as our list of links.
- What kinds of abortion-related care are APCs providing?
In several states, APCs are able to provide surgical and medication abortion services. Abortion-related care can also include options counseling and post-abortion care, diagnosing pregnancy, contraceptive counseling, including EC, and miscarriage management. APCs around the country provide some or all of this care.
- What role do I play in providing abortion care?
Depending on your future practice, you are likely to encounter a patient who wants or is considering an abortion, since 48% of all pregnancies are unintended. Nurses play a critical role in counseling women about their reproductive options and connecting women - particularly poor, rural and young women - to needed information and services. Nurses also perform essential duties in abortion services deliveries.
- Why is it important for nurses to learn about reproductive options?
Nurses are often called upon in their careers to counsel and inform women about their reproductive options, including abortion. It is important to have the skills and background in reproductive options, including abortion, in order to give your patients high quality care.
- What resources are available to educate nursing students?
Unfortunately, many nursing schools do not include abortion and abortion-related care in their curricula. Observing at an abortion clinic, meeting practitioners, and discussing reproductive options with other healthcare professionals can help fill the education gap. Currently, AAP is conducting a pilot study linking nursing faculty, nursing students and clinical facilities to provide optimal learning experiences in a sustainable context.
AAP also offers specific educational resources for nurses. For more information about abortion care in your profession, please log in, free of charge, to our network member site. There you will be able to access resources and links that include a resource for students to understand abortion care in their practice. This toolkit offers values clarification tools and resources intended for the undergraduate nursing student audience.
- How can I set up a clinical observation experience?
A clinical observation is an excellent way to learn about abortion care and investigate your potential role in abortion-related care. The observation experience varies depending on the clinic, though a typical experience includes:
- Being paired with a patient and accompanying her throughout her appointment;
- Observing options counseling, lab testing, ultrasound, abortion procedure, and post-procedure recovery;
- Observing additional procedures or other aspects of the service as desired;
- Opportunities to speak with nurses working in abortion care
AAP provides tailored support to nursing students, practitioners and faculty interested in abortion and may be able to connect you to an opportunity in your area. Currently, AAP is conducting a pilot study linking nursing faculty, nursing students and clinical facilities to provide optimal learning experiences in a sustainable context. We welcome inquiries from everyone from students to nurses more advanced in their career.
- How can I integrate reproductive options education into my nursing program?
If you are a student, seek out a faculty member or other students to investigate what is needed to correct the oversight of reproductive options education in your nursing program. AAP's toolkit for undergraduate nursing has more ideas to get you started on advocating for reproductive options education.
If you are faculty member interested in incorporating reproductive options education in your curriculum, AAP can provide resources and educational tools to assist you, including values clarification exercise, books and toolkits. In addition, AAP houses the Reproductive Options Education Consortium for Nursing [KRB1] (the ROE Consortium), a group of nursing faculty that seeks to address the gaps in reproductive options curricula at nursing programs so that millions of women of all ages will receive better quality, more accessible comprehensive reproductive health care. The ROE Consortium culls resources to be integrated into curricula and provides support for nursing faculty, as well as raises awareness of the absence of reproductive health content in nursing programs. For more information about the Consortium or how it can support your integration of reproductive options education,
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[KRB1]Link to ROE consortium page under collaborations
- How can I better understand my feelings about abortion care?
If you are someone who is uncomfortable about being in involved in abortion care, it might be worth taking the time to understand your own views on this subject. Through something called "values clarification," you can examine the relationship between your personal views and your professional role. AAP has a number of values clarification exercises that you can use.
- What is my professional obligation around abortion?
Maybe you disagree with your patient's reason for having an abortion, or maybe you are opposed to the ending of a pregnancy for moral or religious reasons. Whatever your beliefs, all health professionals have a duty to provide our patients with the care that they need.
Fulfilling this duty can mean providing abortion care or offering unbiased information and quality referrals. All professional organizations have policies on clinician responsibilities and it might be helpful to review the professional policy that pertains to your practice.
- Why should I support AAP?
By ensuring the accessibility of abortion, AAP promotes the health and autonomy of women - now and for future generations.
You donation will have a significant impact because:
- AAP specifically focuses on identifying and addressing gaps in access to abortion, and gaps in work being done by other organizations. Donations to AAP ensure that work is being done in these areas.
- Our focus is on collaboration and on developing innovative models that are freely shared so that strategies can be replicated by others. In this way, every dollar we spend has the potential to reach far beyond our own organization, to advocates and providers across the country.
- By working with doctors, nurses, and other practitioners, AAP builds on-the-ground capacity among healthcare providers upon whom women rely.
- How can I learn more?
Peruse our website, especially our initiatives. Join our newsletters. Connect with a staff member.
- How can I donate?
Donations of any size are welcomed by mail or can be made by clicking here . You may also be able to make a pre-tax donation through a charitable giving program at your place of employment. AAP is a registered participant in workplace giving programs. If you have any questions, feel free to call or e-mail us.
- Is my donation to AAP tax-deductible?
Yes. AAP is a non-profit charitable organization, or a 501(c)(3). All donations to our work are tax-deductible.
- How will my donation be used?
The vast majority of AAP's resources support our work on-the-ground. Our field organizers are based in communities around the country, supporting locally-relevant improvements to abortion access. These organizers are creating networks of abortion providers across Washington State and capturing information about the reproductive health needs of rural women in Iowa. They are establishing pro-choice support in nursing organizations in Oregon and advocating for APCs in Maryland. Several of our field organizers are shared by other local organizations, maximizing collaboration while sharing our resources and expertise on a state level. Our state-based organizers and collaborative approach means that your donation is valuable not only in AAP's work but in efforts to ensure women's health and autonomy.
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