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“A dream you dream alone is only a dream; a dream you dream together is reality.” — Yoko Ono
Mar
9
National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers
Filed Under abortion, activism, anti-choice extremism, reproductive justice | Posted by Cara |
I will be gone all day tomorrow for the Family Planned Advocates of NYS Conference. So I’m going to post this a little early.
National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers is on March 10th. It’s a day that I’ve always felt deserved more attention. It seems to me that it’s rarely recognized, anymore, and that’s a shame. Because abortion providers do deserve our thanks.
Why? Because all of this — activism, donating, voting, etc. — would be absolutely worthless without the providers who actually do provide abortions. Because providing abortions is risky, in that it subjects you to threats, insults, stalking, secrecy, harassment, lawsuits, politicians controlling your practice, and if you’re really unlucky, the occasional gunshot wound. Because it’s much, much easier to just not provide abortions, and they do it anyway. Because without them, there would be no “choice.” Abortion can be as legal as legal gets; if doctors will not perform them, women are still going to end up with perforated uteruses or children they can’t care for or don’t want. (And the antis know this — hence the stalking, harassing, shooting, etc.)
I wish that I had time to write more. But since I have to leave at 4:30a.m., I really ought to go to bed.
I strongly encourage you to look up the address to your nearest Planned Parenthood or other abortion provider and write them a letter of gratitude. I’m sure that they won’t mind it arriving a few days late. Also, encourage others to do the same.
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“Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.” — Susan B. Anthony
Small pet peave here. Only doctors are allowed to perform abortions, so I think you should use the term “abortion doctor” rather than “abortion provider.”
The term “provider” implies that there are a lot of different groups of people providing the abortion, which is not the case. Nurses and other ancillary staff certainly provide support to the doctor, but its the doctor who actually performs the procedure.
A big majority of doctors feel that abortion should be safe and legal, even if they dont want to perform the procedure themselves. Especially the older doctors, they remember the times when the only way a woman could get an abortion were in abandoned row houses and back alleys, performed by idiots who didnt know what they were doing and caused a lot of perforated uteri and induced septic shock which frequently killed the woman. And I wont even get into the coathanger stuff which is even more gruesome.
Actually, in some places in the U.S. nurse practitioners and physicians assistants can provide medical abortion.
But even when referring only to doctors, we use the term abortion providers because “abortion doctor” is not a specialty, and because it is a far less cumbersome term than the truly accurate one, which is an OB/GYN who provides abortions. “Abortion doctor” is used as a belittling term by anti-choicers to imply that this is all they do (almost always not the case), and that abortion care is somehow entirely separate from other OB/GYN care.
But even when referring only to doctors, we use the term abortion providers because “abortion doctor” is not a specialty, and because it is a far less cumbersome term than the truly accurate one, which is an OB/GYN who provides abortions. “Abortion doctor” is used as a belittling term by anti-choicers to imply that this is all they do (almost always not the case), and that abortion care is somehow entirely separate from other OB/GYN care.
Fair enough, I use the term “abortion doctor” not because I’m anti-choice, its just a lot easier to say than “OB/GYN specialist who performs abortions”
Although abortion services are certainly part of the OB/GYN umbrella, there are also a lot of family practitioners (MDs) who also perform abortions. I’ve even heard of pediatricians doing them for adolescent girls.
Even in OB/GYN residency programs, abortion training is optional/elective. All OB/GYN programs are required to offer the training to the doctors who want it, but they do not force all of them to undergo the training.