Fighting to Bring Abortion Back Into Mainstream Medicine

Ironically, Roe v. Wade did not make abortion more widely available in OB/GYN offices. Instead, anti-abortion groups orchestrated a campaign against pro-choice doctors that had the effect of pushing abortion out of doctors' offices and hospitals and into specialized clinics.

In this week's New York Times Magazine, Emily Bazelon profiles the small group of young doctors who are pushing to re-integrate abortion into mainstream medicine:

There's another side of the story, however -- a deliberate and concerted counteroffensive that has gone largely unremarked. Over the last decade, abortion-rights advocates have quietly worked to reverse the marginalization encouraged by activists like Randall Terry. Abortion-rights proponents are fighting back on precisely the same turf that Terry demarcated: the place of abortion within mainstream medicine. This abortion-rights campaign, led by physicians themselves, is trying to recast doctors, changing them from a weak link of abortion to a strong one. Its leaders have built residency programs and fellowships at university hospitals, with the hope that, eventually, more and more doctors will use their training to bring abortion into their practices. The bold idea at the heart of this effort is to integrate abortion so that it's a seamless part of health care for women -- embraced rather than shunned.

Read the full story at the New York Times Magazine.