Dispatches
\nfrom the Abortion Wars<\/a>, you explain the importance of the role
\nof the deputy assistant secretary for population affairs (DAPSA) in the
\nDepartment of Health and Human Services, who is in charge of federal family
\nplanning programs and oversees Title X of the Public Health Service Act.
\nHowever, former DAPSA appointees have lacked substantial professional experience
\nin family planning and have been appointed based more on their moral stances
\nthan credentials. Why is such an important role so frequently overlooked in the
\ndebates about federal laws regarding reproductive freedom?<\/em><\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\nWell, this role is overlooked by most Americans, but
\ncarefully looked at by advocates on both sides of the abortion debate. In
\ngeneral, it is fair to say that most Americans are apolitical, not especially
\ninterested in government, and know relatively little about the workings of the
\nfederal bureaucracy.\n<\/p>\n
\nQ: You write about how
\nmany ob-gyn practitioners lack basic abortion training. Do you think the
\nmedical community’s larger lack of understanding of abortion procedures
\ntrickles down the population at large? How do you think this affects women’s general
\nknowledge of abortion technology and options?<\/strong><\/em>\n<\/p>\n\nEven though most ob-gyns don’t perform abortions, I do not
\nbelieve that they don’t understand what abortion involves — many ob-gyns, for
\nexample, perform procedures (e.g. d and c’s) that are similar to abortions. I
\nbelieve the American public’s misunderstandings of abortion procedures stem
\ndirectly from the very effective propaganda campaigns waged for years by the
\nanti-abortion movement. In particular, the so-called "partial-birth abortion"
\ncampaign led many people to believe that most abortions took place very late in
\npregnancy and involved near-term fetuses. In fact, only 1 percent of all
\nabortions take place after 21 weeks.\n<\/p>\n
\nQ:<\/strong> You explain some of
\nthe ways primary care physicians have incorporated abortion into their
\npractices. Can you talk about some of the hurdles these doctors face?<\/strong><\/em>\n<\/p>\n\nThey face the problem of obtaining malpractice coverage.
\nThey face the problem of having supportive colleagues, who share their
\ncommitments to abortion care, and who will provide coverage for them if they
\nhave to be out of town. In spite of these obstacles, some primary care
\ndoctors-and where it is legally permitted, nurse practitioners, midwives and
\nphysician assistants-have successfully incorporated abortion care into their
\npractices.\n<\/p>\n
\nQ: Why isn’t the general
\npublic more aware of the everyday threat of violence and dangers abortion
\nproviders can face?<\/em><\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\nI think the general public is aware of the violence that
\nproviders face. I think the public is less aware of the other obstacles — such as
\ntargeted regulations against abortion providers ("trap laws"), lack of
\ncollegial support, malpractice problems, etc — that face abortion providers. I am
\nquite convinced that the overwhelming majority of the public is very much
\nagainst the violence faced by providers, especially when it results in murder,
\nas we saw recently with the assassination of Dr. Tiller in Kansas. But though
\nthis violence brings sympathy for the providers (and disgust with the
\nextremists), I also think the legacy of this violence is to mark abortion as
\nsomething that is always controversial, and that many people therefore simply
\nwish to avoid thinking about (until\/unless they need one!).\n<\/p>\n
\nQ: With the enormous
\ncosts in terms of time and resources spent on security, police backup, cleanup
\nand HAZMAT for clinics under the threat and reality of violent
\nactions-including anthrax threats, acid attacks, and arson — why are
\nanti-abortion activists not considered domestic terrorists?<\/em><\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\nExcellent question! Certainly by the abortion rights
\ncommunity, they are thought of in this way — when the violence first started to
\npick up in the late 1980s, I recall advocates going to the administrations of
\nRonald Reagan and the first President Bush and saying exactly that — these are
\ndomestic terrorists… but not until the Clinton administration, and the first
\nkillings of providers in the 1990s, was the problem taken seriously. Clinton
\nsigned the "face act" — "freedom of access to clinic entrances" — which made it a
\nfederal crime to interfere with someone trying to enter a clinic. This did
\nreduce the then quite common blockades and sieges of clinics. And after Dr.
\nBart Slepian of Buffalo was killed in 1998, then-Attorney General Janet Reno
\nconvened a task force within the Justice Department on clinic violence. I do
\nbelieve that the Dept. of Justice, especially under this administration, takes
\nviolence against providers seriously. The problem of course is with
\nimplementation of laws at the local levels. For whatever reasons, the local FBI
\nand the local police in Kansas did not respond to reports of Scott Roeder (the
\nmurderer of Dr. Tiller) having vandalized a Kansas clinic the day before<\/em> the Tiller murder, even
\nthough Roeder’s license plate number was reported to these authorities.\n<\/p>\n\nQ: What effect do you
\nthink the recession is having on women’s access to abortions? How much more
\nlimited are poor women now than they were previously?<\/em><\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\nThere are widespread reports of more women needing
\nreproductive health services — both contraception and abortions — and not being
\nable to afford them. The various funds that help poor women pay for abortions
\n(35 states do not allow use of Medicaid funds for this purpose) report that
\nthey are running out of money, because the requests have escalated. Our access to data on how many abortions are
\ntaking place is always lagging by a few years — but I suspect that this period of
\nrecession will ultimately be revealed to be one in which the number of both
\nunintended pregnancies and abortions rose.\n<\/p>\n
\nQ: How will a
\nsignificantly restricted universal healthcare bill affect low-income women who
\nseek abortions?<\/em><\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\nWell at this moment, it is not clear there will be any
\nkind of healthcare bill, and it almost certainly will not be universal, to my
\ngreat disappointment. From the start, it was clear that the best the abortion
\nrights movement could hope for was the status quo — that is, as the Capps
\nAmendment (named for Rep. Lois Capps of California) put it, the bill would be
\nabortion neutral, leaving in place the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use
\nof public funding for poor women. But both the Stupak Amendment in the House,
\nand the Nelson "compromise" in the Senate, would make the abortion situation
\nworse-ultimately resulting, as health policy scholars from George Washington
\nUniversity concluded, in a situation in which insurance plans which now offer
\nabortion coverage, would cease to do so — making it harder to obtain such
\ninsurance, even with private funds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is no area of medicine except for abortion in which secrecy, constant politicization of a medical procedure, and even fear and shame about medical work is par for the course. While many women seeking abortions find their access to this legal procedure diminishing, abortion providers also face onerous obstacles to providing care, and increasing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-260843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260843\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}