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From the Executive Director's Desk

Increasingly, the public conversation about abortion has focused on reducing the need for abortion as a way to find common ground.  This is an important attempt to reorient a debate [ ... ]


From the Executive Director's Desk PDF Print E-mail
Thursday, 17 December 2009
With this year's effort to enact federal health care reform, more Americans are paying attention to questions of access than perhaps ever before - and certainly since Roe legalized abortion 37 years ago.  At the same time, arguments that one might reasonably expect to hear principally from the right about one of the most common medical procedures in this country - abortion - have taken position on the center stage of the debate:  most notably the notion that government has greater responsibility to protect taxpayers from supporting a procedure they oppose than it has to support women's health and fundamental human rights.  How has it come to be that essential progressive answers to questions about the right to health care and the role of government can be so different when it comes to abortion?  Looking toward the health care system itself provides one clue: the isolation and exclusion of abortion within federal policy mirrors the isolation and exclusion of abortion from mainstream medical practice.  Since 1982 a steadily increasing number of abortions are provided by specialized clinics in urban areas.  This isolates not only the abortion procedure, but the women who are having abortions, cutting off both women and providers of abortion care from the millions of other patients and health care professionals who are invested in the current health care reform debate. 

 

AAP and several of our colleague organizations are working toward a different vision for abortion care, guided by our conviction that a strong system of care is a diverse system that does not isolate abortion or place sole responsibility on a single type of provider setting. We believe that the broader engagement of health and social service providers will not only lead to more equitable and sustainable access, but that it has political implications as well.  Service delivery engages people at the level of the woman and her story - an essential lens through which to view the ‘abortion debate' but one that is difficult to achieve in political discourse. 

 

Colleague organizations within and outside of the SRHR movement are doing important hard work to pass health care reform that improves and expands access to health care without diminishing reproductive decision making and women's dignity and autonomy.  Nevertheless, sacrifices seem imminent.   It is time that we revisit the intersections between access/service delivery and politics/policy and look not only at the impact of policy on practice, but at how practice has shaped  - and could help change - contemporary political realities.

 
From the Executive Director's Desk PDF Print E-mail
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
melanie_zurek_2008.jpgIncreasingly, the public conversation about abortion has focused on reducing the need for abortion as a way to find common ground.  This is an important attempt to reorient a debate so entrenched that it arguably is no longer effective at mobilizing needed change.

 

But we at AAP challenge many of the assumptions behind abortion reduction and are not convinced it is the direction to take.   For example, as Dr. Jackson and I point out in our recent post on RH Reality Check, an abortion reduction agenda runs the risk of attributing causality where it doesn't exist and oversimplifying the reasons for  -- and hence the policy responses to -- abortion. 

 

As women and those working closely with women deeply understand, abortion is the result of multiple intersecting factors that combine uniquely for each woman around her need for and ability to access abortion care. These complexities are not beyond generalization, but demand a nuanced approach at the program and policy level.

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From the Executive Director's Desk PDF Print E-mail
Tuesday, 28 October 2008

Like many matters of personal health and privacy, women’s preferences for abortion care are complex. Each of us experiences the health care system differently depending on where we live, our cultural experience, our economic position, and who we are as individuals.  When it comes to abortion, widespread stigma along with anti-abortion harassment and violence can further shape our expectations of abortion care, narrowing our perceptions of where and from whom we might receive this care as well as limiting our access.

 

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