Abortion as a disparities issue

Thursday, December 9th, 2010  |  2 to 3pm

On December 9th, RWV’s Health Equity Working Group hosted a very informative webinar entitled, Framing Access to Abortion as a Health Disparities Issue. The presenter was Tracy Weitz, PhD, MPA, of UCSF’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health. The restriction of abortion coverage in public insurance has grown over the years, she noted, and will now be affecting millions more women with implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Those experiencing the restrictions will include women who became newly-eligible for Medicaid and those buying private insurance with federal subsidies in state insurance exchanges.

According to Dr. Weitz, we have traditionally viewed abortion through the lenses of  morality and legality: we have judged whether women should be “allowed” to have abortion based on whether we think women have moral obligations to fetuses or whether it is constitutional to limit their rights to abortion. However, Dr. Weitz advocates that we should take a completely different approach, looking at abortion from a public health standpoint.

For a detailed summary of this presentation, please refer to the PowerPoint slides.