University of California, San Francisco is offering an online class on abortion care which already has 3,000 people registered. The class is the first of its kind offered by a U.S. school. The creator and instructor of the course, Jody Steinauer, an associate professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at UCSF, said the course is meant to make up for deficiencies in abortion care instruction in medical school, and even OB/GYN residency.
According to Think Progress, almost 60 percent of abortion doctors in the United States are older than 50, and not enough new doctors are being trained to replace them. Only about 14 percent of all OB/GYNs in the country currently offer abortion services, though 97 percent of them have had at least one patient who has requested an abortion.
Access to abortion is typically framed as a legal issue, but it can also be framed as a medical issue. A woman’s struggle to find an abortion provider could be a combination of restrictive laws, social stigma and lack of medical training. With more clinics closing due to stringent legislation which imposes financially infeasible regulations, women’s access to pregnancy termination services is diminishing in many states. A reduction in the number of doctors who perform the procedure would only exacerbate this trend.
Steinauer’s mission is to decrease the number of doctors who may refuse performing abortions because of lack of knowledge or training, and to increase overall awareness of abortion as a public health issue in the medical community. Not only is it important for doctors to have the skills to perform abortions, it is important for them to recognize why such services are critically important to women’s health. Doctors that perform abortions are more difficult to find in rural areas, where they may be discouraged from performing the procedure for fear of causing controversy in the small communities they live in. Steinauer’s course can educate medical professionals about why they are obligated to provide abortion care to their patients — because of the potential health risks of continuing certain pregnancies, and the potentially severe medical complications of unsafe abortions, among other reasons. Hopefully the dissemination of such information will encourage more doctors to put patient health before the fear of being ostracized by their communities.
There is the question of whether an online course is the best forum to give instruction on how to provide abortion services. Online courses are becoming more common for many professions, and that includes doctors who are looking to add to their medical expertise. An online course provides the opportunity for doctors and students all across the country to access this information, so they will not be limited by the offerings of the institution they currently attend or have attended.
The number of students enrolled in this course clearly indicates there is high demand for academic knowledge on the subject of abortion both on a individual clinical level and on a public health level. Hopefully this course paves the way for more in-person instruction, in the form of more courses in medical schools and more focus on the practice during OB/GYN residency. The medical community must attempt to strip abortion of its taboo status, as it can be a crucial component of women’s reproductive health care, and such an initiative starts with better education.
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