Description
Abortion is
a common experience for reproductive-aged women around the world. In the US, half of all pregnancies are
unintended and half of these end in abortion. (Finer 2013) Around the world,
43.8 million abortions were done in 2008 representing one fifth of all
pregnancies. (Sedgh 2012) Abortion is
safe and has lower morbidity and mortality than childbirth when carried out by
trained practitioners in sanitary conditions (Raymond 2012), but nearly half of
the abortions done in the world are unsafe, according to the WHO definition.
Despite
its universality, abortion remains controversial and inaccessible for many
women. Both the clinical and public health contexts of abortion are often
excluded from curricula in medicine, nursing, and other health professions. Restrictions
at the hospital or clinic level, and conscientious objection at the provider
level compounded with legal restrictions further reduce women’s access to
services.
In this six-week
course, over twenty faculty from various institutions and multiple disciplines will place abortion within the context of
public health and fill in the gaps left by its exclusion from mainstream
curricula in health professions. Each week’s lectures will incorporate the
stories of women who seek abortion in order to better portray abortion significance and rationale. Other topics will include a brief
history of abortion, the clinical aspects of medication and procedural
abortions in and after the first trimester, an overview of patient-centered
abortion-care, the basics of abortion counseling, the professional obligations
of health care practitioners to ensure that women have access to safe abortion
care, and the maze of restrictions that make safe abortion care inaccessible to
many women.
In addition to video lectures, there will be
weekly quizzes, peer assessments, and optional additional content and reading
for learners who want to explore the topic further.