Ru 486 Misconceptions Myths and Morals - ressourcesfeministes

RU 486dubious reproductive technology such as RU 486/PG,feminists should be fighting for de-medicalizing conventionalabortion methods, and doctors and family planning groupsshould be joining suit.The only US states where abortion can be legallyperformed by non-physicians are Vermont and Montana.Yet doctors in the United States are not required to learn toperform abortions. Only one in four of physicians-in-traininglearn the technique. In rural areas, the number of doctorsand clinics performing abortions has been halved since 1977(The Guttmacher Institute quoted in Goodman, 1990:91).In the US anti-abortion climate, many doctors have ceasedto perform abortions, and others will never perform them.Many people, even physicians, believe that the answer tothe abortion problem is to train non-physicians to doabortions (US ABC News, 1990). This does not mean thatphysicians should not perform abortions, or that the medicalfoundation for abortion services is dispensable. It does meanthat abortions need not only, or chiefly, be done by doctors.The Vermont Women’s Health Centre performs one-thirdof all abortions in that state. All are done by physicians’assistants who, as part of a two-year training program inwomen’s health care, learn the procedure. Their record ofsafety and frequency of complications is slightly better thanphysician-performed abortions (US ABC News, 1990). Inmany countries throughout the world, trained laypractitioners are increasingly involved in modern abortiontreatment. Midwives and other lay practitioners perform earlyabortions. We can learn much from lay midwives in makingthe case for women-controlled abortions. For it is laymidwives, more than others, who have led the way in demedicalizingreproduction.Pauline Bart’s article on the Jane Collective, ‘Seizing theMeans of Reproduction: a Feminist Abortion Collective: Howand Why It Worked,’ is virtually the only published workavailable on lay abortion practitioners in the United States.118