Abortion Work: Reproductive Rights, Medicalization, and Decision-Making at an Abortion Clinic

• In Event: 2304 - Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) Research Session: Issues in Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Stratification

Abstract

Stand-alone abortion clinics conduct the majority of elective abortions in the United States and serve the least advantaged women. Such clinics have increasingly come to resemble mainstream health centers rather than the feminist clinics that were established in the years immediately following Roe v. Wade. Based on 18 months of ethnographic observation at a busy abortion clinic in Southern California, this study addresses how institutional changes have shaped abortion work today. I explore abortion as a healthcare practice that creates and maintains occupational divisions within clinic staff. I use organizational decision-making as a mechanism to examine the relationships between external and internal contexts and occupational stratification. Decisions concerning everything from patient care to when to take lunch are made according to a complicated rubric, following an organizational logic of hierarchy, expertise and efficiency. This means that concerns of efficiency and doctors’ skills are prioritized over adherence to a politicized frame prioritizing reproductive rights. In my research, I demonstrate that clinics embrace nontraditional care models to adapt to the demands of managed care regimes and to manage the persistent political conflict around abortion. I also demonstrate that occupational and professional hierarchies structure abortion workers’ relationships to abortion provision. Scholarly and public attention have most often focused on the doctors in abortion care. Yet, many other actors are involved in providing abortions to the women who seek them. My research focuses on the overlooked participants in abortion work and considers how external pressures shape organizational practices and abortion providers’ everyday jobs.

Author

• Kelly Marie Ward, University of California, Irvine