Full Description
Explores the social world where abortion politics and mainstream medicine collide. The author interviewed physicians of obstetrics and gynecology around the United States to find out why physicians rarely integrate abortion into their medical practice. While abortion stigma, violence, and political contention provide some explanation, her findings demonstrate that willing physicians are further encumbered by a variety of barriers within their practice environments. Structural barriers to the mainstream practice of abortion effectively institutionalize the buck-passing of abortion patients to abortion clinics. As the author notes, ""Public-health-minded HMOs and physician practices could significantly change the world of abortion care if they stopped outsourcing it."" Drawing from forty in-depth interviews, the book presents a challenge to a commonly held assumption that physicians decide whether or not to provide abortion based on personal ideology. Physician narratives demonstrate how their choices around learning, doing, and even having abortions themselves disrupt the pro-choice/pro-life moral and political binary.|Willing and Unable explores the social world where abortion politics and mainstream medicine collide. The author interviewed physicians of obstetrics and gynecology around the United States to find out why physicians rarely integrate abortion into their medical practice. While abortion stigma, violence, and political contention provide some explanation, her findings demonstrate that willing physicians are further encumbered by a variety of barriers within their practice environments. Structural barriers to the mainstream practice of abortion effectively institutionalize the buck-passing of abortion patients to abortion clinics. As the author notes, ""Public-health-minded HMOs and physician practices could significantly change the world of abortion care if they stopped outsourcing it."" Drawing from forty in-depth interviews, the book presents a challenge to a commonly held assumption that physicians decide whether or not to provide abortion based on personal ideology. Physician narratives demonstrate how their choices around learning, doing, and even having abortions themselves disrupt the pro-choice/pro-life moral and political binary.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Abortion in American Medicine: A Recent History
Chapter 3: Unwilling, Willing, and Why
Chapter 4: Dr. Anderson's Choices: On Learning, Doing, and Having Abortions
Chapter 5: Practice Constraints and the Institutionalized Buck-Passing of Abortion Care
Chapter 6: Abortion Prohibitions and Miscarriage Management in Catholic-Owned Health Care
Chapter 7: Conclusion
Appendix A: Abortion Terminology
Appendix B: A Methodological Note on City Size
Notes
Works Cited
Index
