Thread by @DrDGrossman

Apropos of nothing, patients will always need access to abortion care. They always have. As all public health professionals know, access to healthcare is dependent on race, class, region, immigration status, etc. As all medical professionals know, contraception fails sometimes.

Research from @Guttmacher shows about half of abortion patients used contraception the month they became pregnant.

“Contraceptive methods are highly effective at preventing unintended pregnancies, but no method—and no user—is perfect,” @rachelj5
guttmacher.org/news-release/2…

There are many reasons why patients’ contraceptive methods fail or they do not use them.

Similarly, about half of abortion patients have more than one abortion, for different reasons.

You can read @rachelj5, @Guttmacher’s research here: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

There’s no point in calling for abortion to be ‘rare’, except to stigmatize those who need it. Perhaps, we could better serve patients by focusing our time on both increasing options of contraception (and making them available over the counter!) and increasing access to abortion.

Providing access to contraception is critical to patients’ healthcare options, and so is providing abortion access. They aren’t adversaries.

I guess I don’t see what we gain by being honest about why patients seek abortions and why we provide them.

(Well, aside from stigma. 🤷🏻‍♂️)

Ack! I guess I don’t see what we *lose*!! Not what we gain!