Now that the shouting is over, how will health care reform affect women's reproductive rights and health? I caught up with the noted sociologist Carole Joffe via e-mail earlier this week, and she graciously agreed to an e-mail interview. For a more detailed view of the current abortion terrain, be sure to read her latest book, Dispatches from the Abortion Wars: The Costs of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us (Beacon). It's terrific--clear, terse, and full of things you need to know.
Q: What do you see as the effect of health care reform on women's reproductive lives and choices?
A: I call it the good, the bad, and the ugly. The unequivocal good is that 30 million people who currently don't have coverage will gain this basic human right. Regular access to primary care will mean healthier women overall, which will ultimately translate into healthier pregnancies--and hopefully, the rates of maternal mortality and infant mortality, both now at disturbing levels in the US, will improve. Women will gain access to the more effective, more expensive forms of contraception (oral contraception, the newer and safer IUDs), and that will surely reduce the rate of unintended pregnancy in the US, which, again, is shockingly high in comparison to other industrialized countries. As numerous commentators have pointed out, European countries with national health care systems have far lower rates of unintended pregnancies, and thus lower rates of abortion than the US, even though abortions are freely available and typically subsidized.
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