Could You Get an Abortion From Your Doctor If You Needed One?
If you were seeking an abortion, where would you go? Would you be able to get one from your primary care physician or your OB-GYN? And if you couldn’t get an abortion from either, how would you proceed?
Here is a scary fact: According to the Guttmacher Institute, in 2014, people seeking abortion in the U.S. often had to drive between 180 and 330 miles to access the procedure. Business Insider reports that the number of clinics in the country has decreased from 851 in 2008 to 788 in 2014, and five states have only a single clinic.
Not surprisingly, the number of abortion providers is woeful as well — according to the Guttmacher Institute, in 2014, 90 percent of U.S. counties do not have one, so if you live in one of those counties, you have to figure out how you’re getting to a county or a state that does have one, and that’s going to increase both the time it takes to access the abortion and how much it will cost.
More: What’s It Like to Wait More Than 72 Hours for an Abortion?
Why are there so few abortion providers? Well, for one, abortion isn’t part of the curriculum in most medical schools, although it’s an extremely common procedure, which 1 in 4 people with vaginas will undergo in their lifetime.
“Abortion isn’t covered in formal curriculum because it’s controversial,” Lois Backus, executive director of Medical Students for Choice says. MSFC works to increase the number of abortion providers by increasing opportunities for medical students to become providers as well as working with medical schools to expand their curricula around all facets of reproductive health. Currently, MSFC says it has activists working at 90 percent of U.S. medical schools and in 25 countries, and its alumni provide abortions all over the U.S. and the world.
Abortion isn’t commonly addressed in residency programs, Backus says, not just because most abortions don’t take place in hospitals, but because residencies are often pressed for time, and some institutions, such as Catholic hospitals, refuse to address it. There’s also the matter of abortion stigma, which dictates how others regard abortion, and that includes perpetuating falsehoods about abortion (it causes breast cancer, it ruins your fertility) and ideas that it’s a dirty, unsafe procedure, which “real” doctors don’t perform.
So what about your own doctor?
It’s not uncommon to not know if your doctor is trained to perform abortions — and you might not think to ask about it until you need it.
Jackie, who lives in New York City, was in her second trimester when she learned her fetus had a serious genetic disease, and she and her husband decided on abortion. “Finding any doctor to terminate after 12 weeks was very difficult,” she says. She spent days calling around the city to find a provider, and eventually did. Second trimester abortions are more complex than first trimester, and because of that, providers need to be trained specifically in them. Since we’re talking about a shortage of providers in general, the scarcity of second trimester providers is high, while the need, of course, still exists.
It’s important to have a conversation with your doctor about abortion before you need one, not just because statistically, you may need abortion care at some point in your life, but also because it’s a good way to bust abortion stigma, and your doctor might be nervous about bringing it up.
So the next time you have an appointment with your OB-GYN or general practitioner, ask them about abortion care — it’s good information to have, and you’re doing your part to normalize the conversation.