From pragmatism to politics: a qualitative study of abortion providers

Twenty-eight years after the United State Supreme Court issued its landmark Roe v. Wade, the struggle continues to ensure that all women have the full range of reproductive choices, including abortion. While the struggle can be addressed through its political, religious, and medical dimensions, it also can be examined through the perspectives of those who actually provide abortions. This paper examines the perspectives of physician abortion providers to understand more fully their motivations, the quality of their personal and professional lives, their views on the future of abortion services, and their recommendations for undergraduate and residency medical education. Such questions are often best answered through qualitative inquiry, particularly when the subject at hand has had little interpretive scrutiny, lacks theoretical understandings, and remains in general an under-investigated phenomenon. Because abortion providers and the work they do fit those criteria, a qualitative study of physician providers in Ohio was undertaken. This paper is divided into the following sections: a literature review of abortion services in the United States, methods, interview data and discussion, and last, recommendations and conclusions.