Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe V. Wade

The real story of the medical campaign against abortionthrough the eyes of pro-choice physicians.

The real story of the medical campaign against abortionthrough the eyes of pro-choice physicians.

Read more from Beacon Press author Carole Joffe on 
RHrealitycheck.org

"Well-researched and clearly written. . . Provides a compelling narrative of the dedication of doctors who have braved society's continuing ambivalence toward women's right to choose."
—K. Kaufmann, San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle

A fabulous read. . . intense and absorbing. —Marge Berer, Women's Review of Books

The battle for legal abortion in the United States may have been won, but access to safe medical abortions is rapidly narrowing. Some 84 percent of all U.S. counties are now without abortion facilities, and the situation is growing worse. How are we to explain the crisis of abortion access? In Doctors of Conscience, Carole Joffe argues that in addition to the violence and disruption of the anti-abortion movement, the medical community itself must share the blame. Joffe traces the ways mainstream medicine has marginalized abortion even after Roe vs. Wade, by failing to establish needed training and services and by stigmatizing and penalizing doctors who perform abortions. The costs have been high - not only for women with unwanted pregnancies, but also for doctors committed to providing safe medical abortions. Based on in-depth interviews with forty-five physicians who have provided or facilitated abortions, Doctors of Conscience recalls the days before Roe, when emergency rooms were filled with women maimed and infected by botched abortions. Witnessing the desperation of women seeking illegal abortions was a turning point in the careers of many of the doctors interviewed. After Roe, they continued to be haunted by their experiences.