What do you say when you have Hillary Clinton on the phone?  For Joyce Cappiello, AAP's Director of the ROE Consortium, the first thing that comes to mind is nursing and abortion care.  On a live call with the presidential candidate and an audience of New Hampshire nurses, her question was one of the few chosen by the campaign to be addressed:

"An increasing number of health care providers are refusing to provide reproductive health care.  While pharmacist refusals to provide
contraceptives have gained the most media attention, individual and religious based institutional health care providers have long refused to offer other reproductive health services such as sterilization and abortion and have gained increasing support from the federal government in doing so. What would you do to ensure that patients have access to the care they need in light of this growing trend?"

Clinton's response strongly supports women's health, not a surprise given her track record in the Senate.  But the attention given to Joyce's question is remarkable and underscores the importance of discussing and advocating for nurses' involvement in abortion care.  "There are instances in hospitals where an entire staff of OR nurses will opt out of abortion care and an entirely new team must be brought in.  The time and administrative burden of that kind of turnover can mean fewer appointments are available to patients," Joyce explains. How can the trend of provider refusal be addressed? "Education can do so much to encourage nurses to really hone in on their responsibility to their patients and understand how that intersects with their own values. I always remember the example of an entire nursing staff resigning in response to their healthcare facility transitioning offer abortion care, only to have most of the staff return after engaging in educational workshops and values clarification exercises." The delivery of abortion care is so often overshadowed by the political strife around reproductive rights. Discussing it with a presidential candidate is probably not the key to depoliticizing the issue. But getting information and opportunities for dialogue to the healthcare providers who address patients' needs every day can be an important step to bring women's health back into focus.

Interested in knowing more about nurses' role in abortion care?