{"product_id":"dispatches-from-the-abortion-wars-isbn-9780807001288","title":"Dispatches from the Abortion Wars","description":"\u003cb\u003eSurprising firsthand accounts from the front lines of abortion provision reveal the persistent cultural, political, and economic hurdles to access\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMore than thirty-five years after women won the right to legal abortion, most people do not realize how inaccessible it has become. In these pages, reproductive-health researcher Carole Joffe shows how a pervasive stigma—cultivated by the religious right—operates to maintain barriers to access by shaming women and marginalizing abortion providers. Through compelling testimony from doctors, health-care workers, and patients, Joffe reports the lived experiences behind the polemics, while also offering hope for a more compassionate standard of women’s health care.Preface\u003cbr\u003e 1 The Stigma of Abortion\u003cbr\u003e 2 “You Need a Community with You”: Becoming an Abortion Provider\u003cbr\u003e 3 The Clinics: Ground Zero in the Abortion Wars\u003cbr\u003e 4 Regulating Abortion\u003cbr\u003e 5 Hospital-Based Abortions: Chaos, Cruelty, and Some Accommodation\u003cbr\u003e 6 Abortion Patients and the “Two Americas” of Reproductive Health\u003cbr\u003e 7 “Every Woman Is Different”: What Good Abortion Care Looks Like\u003cbr\u003e 8 What Kind of America Do We Want?\u003cbr\u003e Afterword: “Abortion Is a Perfectly Proper Noun”\u003cbr\u003e Postscript The Legacy of George Tiller\u003cbr\u003e Acknowledgments\u003cbr\u003e Notes\u003cbr\u003e Index\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e “No one knows more about reproductive rights in the United States than Carole Joffe. This indispensable book . . . is both harrowing and galvanizing.”—Michelle Goldberg, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Means of Reproduction\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Terrific—clear, terse, and full of things you need to know.”\u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003eKatha Pollitt, author of \u003ci\u003eVirginity or Death!\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Riveting. Joffe’s insights into popular culture, alongside her analysis of the recent barrage of ballot initiatives, are spot on in explaining the growth of negative attitudes about abortion.”—Eleanor J. Bader,\u003ci\u003e Feminist Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Instructive and memorable.”—Emily Bazelon, \u003ci\u003eSlate\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eCarole Joffe\u003c\/b\u003e is a professor at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California-San Francisco, and a professor emerita of sociology at the University of California-Davis. She is the author of several other books, including \u003ci\u003eDoctors of Conscience.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom the Preface\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Cliché though it may be, there really are abortion wars raging in the  United   States, wars fought on numerous fronts. The front that most  resembles conventional warfare involves attacks on those who provide  abortions. Since the 1973 \u003ci\u003eRoe v. Wade \u003c\/i\u003edecision legalizing  abortion, eight members of the abortion-providing community have been  murdered, and numerous others have been stalked at their homes and  churches as well as at their workplaces. Children of some providers are  harassed at their schools. Antiabortion fanatics continue to this day to  firebomb and vandalize clinics. Staff and patients at these clinics are  subjected to constant picketing and often ear-splitting verbal  harassment delivered through megaphones. As in other wars, opponents of  abortion engage in intelligencegathering by videotaping those who enter  abortion-providing facilities and photographing the license plates in  the clinics’ parking lots.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e But there are many other important fronts in the abortion wars. To an  extraordinary degree, abortion dominates our national politics, often  serving as the decisive issue in parties’ choice of candidates, in the  nomination of judges at all levels of the judiciary, in the selection of  political appointees to serve in federal agencies. Most strikingly,  during the two presidential terms of George W. Bush, an individual’s  stance on abortion was typically used to determine his or her fitness to  serve in positions that had absolutely nothing to do with that  issue—for example, a position on a drug advisory panel. The abortion  wars have also had an impact on U.S. foreign policy, determining in some  instances how much foreign aid a particular country will receive. At  recent United Nations conferences, the U.S. delegation’s fanatical  opposition not only to abortion but to contraception drew scorn from  other nations and often left the United States isolated.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e State legislatures have also been extremely consequential terrains in  the abortion wars, as hundreds of regulations attempting to restrict  abortion care in various ways are introduced each year. At the local  level, the abortion wars are reflected in how a particular community  responds to the presence, or potential presence, of an  abortion-providing facility. Whether a landlord will rent or sell a  suitable building, whether contractors agree to work on it, whether  vendors such as cleaning services will agree to do business with a  clinic—all these factors, which typically are not issues in other areas  of health care, can determine whether abortion care can survive in a  particular place.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The abortion wars have had a dramatic impact on popular culture as  well. Several television shows in the 1970s portrayed women choosing  abortions in a sympathetic light, which unleashed a flood of complaints  to the networks and advertisers by irate opponents of abortion. Ever  since, both television and Hollywood have notably avoided a repetition  of that mistake.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Finally, American medical culture is an often overlooked but extremely  important front in the abortion wars. For various reasons, which I  elaborate further in the following chapters, American medicine has  supported the concept of legal abortion but has been much more  ambivalent about those who actually perform the procedure. This  ambivalence has resulted in a chronic shortage of providers. Abortion  politics has also led to policies at some hospitals that put women’s  health at unacceptable risk.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e In writing this book about the abortion wars, I am not claiming to  provide a balanced account, as do many other social scientists and  journalists who address the abortion issue. Rather, I see myself as a  war correspondent, embedded with troops on one side of the conflict (the  troops in this instance being the abortion-providing community). I also  do not aspire to change the minds of those who are convinced that  abortion is immoral. My goal instead is to show the costs of these wars.  They are costly, obviously, for those seeking abortions and those  providing them. But I believe these wars have also proved costly for  American society as a whole, causing a degradation of our political  culture. The abortion wars have not only brought an unprecedented level  of violence and terrorism to healthcare institutions; they have also led  to a culture of lies about science and medicine at the highest levels  of government. I have come to understand the abortion wars as a  brilliant distraction that drains energies and resources away from other  social needs, including the adequate provision of services that would  allow people to have the intimate and family lives they wish for.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e In both the subtitle of this book and several times thus far in this preface, I have used the words \u003ci\u003efanaticism, fanatics, \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003efanatical. \u003c\/i\u003eI  do not use such provocative words lightly. People who kill and  terrorize those they disagree with on abortion, I believe, merit the  designation fanatics, because they view ending abortion as justifying  any means. I believe that charges of fanaticism are also fairly applied  to those figures in political and religious circles who legitimate such  violence (for example, a sitting U.S. senator who has called for the  death penalty for abortion providers, or a priest who has called the  murder of providers “justifiable homicide”). I see fanaticism at work in  the numerous efforts to equate the value of a woman’s life with that of  an embryo: for example, the official Republican Party platform, which  does not permit abortion even in cases of a threat to a woman’s life. I  similarly view as fanatics those who have taken it upon themselves to  redefine many forms of contraception as abortion and who are now seeking  to withhold birth control from the vast majority of Americans, who do  not share their views.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e However, I do \u003ci\u003enot \u003c\/i\u003ebelieve that most of the individuals who  oppose abortion should be considered fanatics. There is no question that  most Americans who consider themselves “pro-life” disavow the terrorist  acts of the most violent wing of the antiabortion movement. Many of  those opposed to abortion, moreover, favor exceptions in cases of  threats to the life of the woman and pregnancies that result from rape  or incest. Given that at least occasional use of birth control is nearly  universal among heterosexually active Americans, we can safely assume  that a strong majority of abortion opponents do not embrace the more  recent campaign against contraception. In numerical terms, therefore,  those who can reasonably be labeled fanatics make up a very small  portion of the universe of abortion opponents. My argument is that the  violent actions and extremist political positions of the most fanatical  sector of the antiabortion movement, however, have had significant  consequences.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e In a country where systematic political violence is rare (and never  before aimed at a particular group of health-care professionals), the  attacks on abortion providers have inevitably had a searing impact on  Americans’ consciousness. For medical institutions, the legacy of this  violence (which, after a period of quiescence, reemerged in 2009 with  the brutal assassination of Dr. George Tiller) contributes to a  reluctance by administrators to incorporate abortion care and a  reluctance on the part of some clinicians otherwise drawn to this work  to perform abortions. For American society more generally, the violence  and endless protesting at clinics have marked abortion as something  highly controversial and have therefore added to its stigmatization.  Similarly, the absolutism that would ban all abortions sometimes leads  centrist politicians to make costly compromises on how abortion is  regulated. Many restrictions that appear reasonable impose cruel  barriers for many of the most vulnerable women. Others, such as the  requirement that doctors lie to their patients about disproved links  between abortion and breast cancer or suicide, may not appear reasonable  to the public once people learn of them, but these regulations serve to  reinforce the idea that abortion is always embroiled in  contentiousness.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e In short, the most fanatical elements of the antiabortion movement have  established the contours of the abortion wars. These true believers  have sought to eliminate from public conversation about abortion what I  believe the issue most cries out for: a recognition of nuance. But with  the black-and-white view of the world that is characteristic of  fanaticism, they have refused to acknowledge the shades of gray that are  inevitably present in matters pertaining to sexuality, reproduction,  and abortion. Ironically, the wars against abortion waged by fanatics  are counterproductive, leading to more unintended pregnancies and  therefore more abortions.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e What are my credentials as an abortion war correspondent? I am a  sociologist with broad interests in reproductive health and reproductive  politics. In particular, I have focused on those who make up the  workforce in abortion facilities and other reproductive health settings.  For the past thirty years or so I have interviewed and observed at  clinics where abortions (and usually other reproductive health services)  are offered. I have watched young doctors and other clinicians being  trained to perform these procedures. I have attended numerous  conferences where providers gather to discuss their work lives.  Conveniently, the development of a number of Listservs within the  abortion-providing community in the past decade has enabled me to  transcend the limitations of geography and remain engaged in regular  conversation with providers throughout the country.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e My observations of the abortion issue over such a long period have  allowed me to witness an important transformation in both the strategy  and the rhetoric of the antiabortion movement. In the period immediately  after \u003ci\u003eRoe, \u003c\/i\u003ewomen getting abortions were a prime focus of the  movement’s wrath, demonized as “murderers,” “sluts,” and, interestingly,  “lesbians” (I recall a group of protesters taunting abortion patients  outside a Philadelphia clinic in the late 1970s with this accusation).  But this antiwoman discourse could not last, for the simple reason that  too many women, including some within antiabortion circles, were getting  abortions. Women who sought abortions became reframed as victims:  “Abortion hurts women” is today one of the leading messages of the  antiabortion movement. And providers, those doing the “hurting,” became  the prime villains in the abortion drama of opponents.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e I report on this war from the perspective of these embattled providers of abortion. By \u003ci\u003eprovider, \u003c\/i\u003eI  mean not only the clinicians who perform abortions but also the clinic  directors and managers who have the challenging task of administering  the freestanding clinics where most abortions in the United States take  place. Very often, as we will see, it is they who suffer from physical  attacks, who deal with the police when surrounded by aggressive  protesters or when suspicious packages arrive, who deal with lawyers  when state legislators pass yet another restriction, who plead with the  plumber to come fix the frozen pipes even though the plumber’s fellow  church members have urged him not to provide service to the  “baby-killers.” As such, clinic directors and staff members are  important combatants in the abortion wars.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e This book was started during the presidency of George W. Bush, an  unusually harsh and dispiriting time for those who work in the field of  reproductive health, including abortion care. It is being completed in  the first months of the presidency of Barack Obama. Like virtually all  the providers and advocates whom you will meet in this book, I am  heartened by the election of Barack Obama and eagerly look forward to  his presidency. I am hopeful that with this change of administration,  some lessening of the abortion wars may be posxvi sible. Specifically, I  hope that opponents of abortion will come to agree with supporters that  the root problem that must be addressed is that nearly half of all  pregnancies in the United   States are unintended. When the problem is  framed this way, then solutions are at least partly found in improved  contraceptive access and in factually accurate and in-depth sex  education—options that were decisively repudiated by the Bush  administration. But even if this hoped-for progress on reducing unwanted  pregnancies occurs, some abortions will always be needed, and our new  president clearly understands that.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e These promising possibilities of the Obama presidency notwithstanding, I  have no illusions that the abortion wars will be “over” simply because  of the outcome of the 2008 election. Antiabortion forces received a  setback in that election, but the movement, including its most violent  wing, is hardly going away, as the murder of Dr. Tiller made tragically  clear. Most important, the day-to-day events in abortion clinics—the  trenches from which most of my dispatches will be sent—are affected as  much by local events as by national ones. In places where antiabortion  sentiment remains strong, provision will remain very challenging. The  stigma that I believe explains so much about the place of abortion in  American culture runs deep, and will change only slowly. Nevertheless, I  hope the following pages reveal that in the abortion wars, women who  seek abortions and the men and women who provide them are themselves  resourceful and committed combatants.","brand":"Beacon Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303942738149,"sku":"NP9780807001288","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780807001288.jpg?v=1767725245","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/dispatches-from-the-abortion-wars-isbn-9780807001288","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}