Comments on: Access to Abortion: Silent Threats and Shady State Deals

By: Steph

Steph — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:50:00 +0000

Does NARAL or NAF have some stats on medical schools and restrictive laws on teaching med students how to perform abortions? I’d be interested to see that.

During the brief 20 minutes I was considering being a doctor, I looked through some women’s health textbooks and most of them had between a paragraph and two pages on abortion. Some coverage for one of the most common surgeries in the country.

By: freewomyn

freewomyn — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:40:58 +0000

Yeah, this is a huge issue, because when doctors like Carhart and Hern retire, there will be no one left who is qualified to perform late abortions. As for abortion in general, the same logic holds true. What good is legal access if there is no one to provide the service?

And eff the U of A.

By: Jeffrey

Jeffrey — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:48:08 +0000

I can see some merit to letting students opt-out of learning how to perform abortion procedures, but this system isn’t opt-out, it requires students to opt-in to training, which given how tight a med student’s schedule is already seems horrifically unfair. Also, students shouldn’t have any option when it comes to learning how to treat and detect botched abortions, didn’t we learn anything from the 50’s? Do we need to go back to having septic wards because nobody knows how to deal with these issues?

Also as far as the Arizona deal goes, check out this excerpt from the Tucson Weekly page:

“In a 2000 story in the Tucson Citizen, the former legislator who sponsored the bill, Jim Skelly, is quoted as saying that he deliberately added the rider to a bill the university desperately wanted.

“And it worked,” he’s quoted as saying. “The university’s ideology sure went down the drain when it came to expanding the sports arena, now didn’t it?”"

That’s just despicable, it makes me so angry I can’t even think of something coherent to say about it.