Understanding Choice

I’m not one to try and stimulate controversy surrounding public health issues. I’ve always felt like being pro-choice just meant giving women the chance to choose what was right for them; not making the choice over life or death, but over just that... choice.

This week as part of my summer exploration of medicine, I volunteered at Plan Parenthood. Coming from a Public Health background it seemed like a natural fit. Especially when trying to understand the barriers to access to birth control among adolescent women, or even getting a better grasp of how people of all cultures, backgrounds, socioeconomic statuses were talking about sex.

It was in the most real sense... challenging. Not because I felt any differently about what it meant to choose, but because the reality of the choice became so real for me as a future physician. It is HARD. I realized as physicians we are afforded this window in parts of the world most people never get to see... or would want to see. Life and happiness are all lovely, but just as frequently there is death, disease and difficult decisions. It was the first time I was confronted with that idea of a spectrum in such graphic terms. Life and death balances, so literally.

Abortion services in most countries are stigmatized. Things are no different for us here in North America. Despite abortions being legal in the United States and Canada many medical schools will graduate physicians who have never seen a procedure. Even more shocking, many Obstetrics and Gynecology (OB/GYN) residency programs do not train their residents in the procedure.

In 2002, New York City became the first city to incorporate abortion training into standard OB/GYN residency training. In recent years California has enacted a similar law. Residents who object to the training are able to opt-out based on moral grounds. The hope is to increase the number of physicians who provide medical and surgical abortions and counteract the recent decline of physicians willing to provide the service.

Lobby groups have also been advocating for all physicians to gain exposure to abortion services as a part of providing comprehensive reproductive health services. One such group is Medical Students for Choice (MSFC), a group that provides opportunities for medical students to shadow abortion providers around the world. As more young students are exposed to the practice they will begin to understand the importance of providing abortion as a part of the spectrum of health services; ensuring patients have a choice to make the decision for themselves.