The Times Magazine has a good profile of the new generation of abortion providers, who are products of residency programs quietly established with financial help from the Buffet family, among others:
When Salt Lake City and Atlanta are home to programs that train doctors to be expert in abortion and contraception, the profession sends a signal that family-planning practices are an accepted, not just tolerated, part of what doctors do. That helps draw young physicians. The first generation of providers after Roe took on abortion as a crusade, driven by the urgent memory of seeing women become sick or die because they tried to induce an abortion on their own, in the days before legalization. Out of necessity, the doctors pushed ahead with little training or support. “We did it by the seat of our pants,” says Philip Ferro, an 82-year-old OB-GYN at the S.U.N.Y Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. “There was no formal source of knowledge.”
As Ferro wryly puts it, “That would not stand today.” Abortion and contraception have become the subjects of rigorous, evidence-based research. The younger doctors who are coming through the residency training programs and the Family Planning Fellowship “have invigorated this field beyond my greatest expectations,” Grimes, the researcher and abortion provider, says. “We are cranking out highly qualified, dedicated physicians who are doing world-class research. There is a whole cadre of people. I helped train some of them, and I’m very proud of that. In the 1980s, I wasn’t sure who would fill in behind me when I retired. I’m much more optimistic now.”
Another take home from the article is that the terrorism practiced by right-to-lifers has mainly served to deny rural and semi-rural communities the services of abortion providers, because it’s really damn hard to be the only provider in an area.
DougJ
Terrorism really is the right word right here. They hate us for our freedoms.
joe from Lowell
Yep. The point of these assassinations isn’t just to eliminate the victim, but to make all of the other doctors and med students a little afraid, for a specific political purpose.
danimal
Terrorists don’t look like white males, therefore anti-abortion bombers and killers can’t be terrorists.
Sheesh, I thought everyone knew that.
WereBear (itouch)
So they are enforcing their beliefs on a captive population. Now who does that again?
frankdawg
My cousin ran the Planned Parenthood in the heart of Batshit Bachmann’s district years ago. One of her most vocal critics was a local Ob-Gyn. He organized harassment of clinic workers on Sunday after Mass. She also said that several women came to her for advice on birth control after they had had an abortion . . . done by that doctor.
mistermix
Another thing on terrorism: if they weren’t facing terrorists, Planned Parenthood clinics wouldn’t look like bunkers. Every time I pass Rochester’s clinic/bomb shelter, that really pisses me off.
General Stuck
Reports indicate that President Obama upon delivering his weekly address accusing republicans of “evil upon the nation and Islam” proceeded to display his displeasure with the GOP by executing a baby elephant with an “Afro Comb”.
Doctor Science
That’s Buffett, as in Warren, not buffet, as in brunch.
I had a fair bit of respect for Buffett already, because he and Gates are, as far as I know, the richest people with children ever to *not* leave their fortunes to their families. Now it jumps upward again.
Chad N Freude
I would think that this would thoroughly discredit abortion doctors.
Suzan
. . . and live.
because it’s really damn hard to be the only provider in an area.
PurpleGirl
Medical Students for Choice (http://www.ms4c.org/ ) is an organization dedicated to the training of future doctors in abortion procedures and related procedures. They have statistics on the number of medical schools which do and do not teach these procedures and the numbers of doctors who don’t learn beyond the most basic reproductive health information. They work to support doctors providing reproductive health care, to encourage curriculum changes in medical schools and increase the number of doctors trained in providing abortions and related health care.
BC
Guess we’ll need to set up a fund so women in underserved areas can go to the abortion providers. This would really undermine abortion laws in places like Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma – have some way for women in those areas to get abortions in urban areas. Hey, they go to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for routine checkups already from those areas or to the Cleveland Clinic for heart work, so it’s just one more procedure they go out of state for. Also, it means it’s harder for the citizens to demonstrate against the abortion providers or target them for assassination.
Kerry Reid
And lack of providers in rural areas is another reason why laws requiring 24 hours (or more) of “reflection” before a woman can get an abortion are so onerous — they add extra barriers to women who already have trouble finding someone willing to do it.
I worked at Planned Parenthood about 20 years ago, and I can tell you that the people who were the most vocal protesters always brought themselves or their daughters to our clinic when they needed services. The psychological disconnect was frightening. Basically, I think they excused it the way most people on the right do — by pretending that it was really those people who “used abortion for birth control,” whereas they just made a “mistake.”
OTOH, I would hate to think of what happens to a kid raised by people with that mindset.
ThresherK
While idly waiting for someone inside the Beltway to worry that some 16-y.o. in Nebraska will get their life ruined by these anti-choicers, I thought: How about hiding the real medical services inside a faux bookmobile, with titles painted on the side like “Are you there, God? It’s me, Margaret”?
A certain audience will never step foot inside an RV like that.
JBL
@PurpleGirl: yes, they feature prominently in the article.
@BC: Is the National Network of Abortion Funds the sort of thing you’re thinking of? (www.nnaf.org) I don’t know anything about them, but I typed “provide transportation to abortion clinics” into my search engine and it was one of the top hits.
eemom
This is one of many reasons the firebagger demagoguery over the Stupidpak amendment as “the worst assault on a woman’s right to choose in a generation” is so fucked up. That “assault” is carried on every day, with devastating effect, by (1) the terror campaign and (2) wingnut state legislatures. Anyone who really cares about abortion rights is focused on those.
The availability of insurance $$ to pay for an abortion for women who don’t face insurmountable access barriers has zero practical impact. Most women who are in a position to have non-federal subsidized insurance can afford an abortion, which only costs $300-$400 and is not a recurring expense. Women dependent on federal $$ are screwed anyway under the Hyde amendment.
Similar to the anti-abortion freaks who don’t give a shit about children once they’re born, the firebaggers railing against HCR on this issue don’t give a shit about a woman’s ability to actually, you know, GET an abortion.
dj spellchecka
and by targeting “rural and semi-rural communities,” the gopiban is targeting their own woman voters…
Lori
I think that videoconferencing by doctors, with physician’s assistants or nurse practitioners performing the hands-on work, will help make abortions more accessible. There are a *lot* of physician assistants and a lot of nurse practitioners. A remote doctor could videoconference to many areas of a state each day, with a low cost and high degree of safety (for the doctor and the patients). Is videoconferencing for vacuum aspiration abortions happening yet, in the US?
PhoenixRising
Yes. My sister is a CNM (nurse midwife)/NP whose license permits her to deliver babies in hospital, clinic or home settings…and with video links to her supervising physician, she can do a D&C.
But mostly she doesn’t do surgical abortions. Her chemical abortion services are used weekly, post-birth install of an IUD twice a month and vasectomies only about once a month. Which is of course the opposite of what anyone who thinks fetal life is fully human should want. (She’d do 10 vasectomies a day if she could chase the guys down and knock ’em out. It’s now a mostly reversible procedure, go figure that vasectomy technology has advanced at 10 times the pace of other contraceptive techniques and you can’t hardly get any of them done.)
tkogrumpy
@PhoenixRising: Well I had one in 1969, one of the best decisions I ever made. I can’t tell you the number of women who loved me for it.