The University of California in San Francisco is launching the first-ever online abortion course mean to educate students on the various types of abortion in order to help them to “take steps in their communities to increase access to safe abortion and decrease stigma about abortion.”
The College Fix is reporting on the course which promises to delve into “clinical aspects of medication abortion, aspiration abortion, post-abortion contraception, and pain management for abortion,” the course outline states. It will also cover topics such as the history of abortion, “abortion stigma,” complications and counseling.
The pro-abortion course, which includes suggested reading from The Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, will incorporate the stories of women who seek abortion in each class “in order to better portray abortion significance and rationale,” the outline states.
“Other topics will include a brief history of abortion, the clinical aspects of medication and procedural abortions in and after the first trimester, an overview of patient-centered abortion-care, the basics of abortion counseling, the professional obligations of health care practitioners to ensure that women have access to safe abortion care, and the maze of restrictions that make safe abortion care inaccessible to many women.”
The six-week class is free and is open for everyone, including “any clinician, physician, health care worker or student who will care for women of reproductive age.”
Dr. Jody Steinauer, associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California – San Francisco, told the Daily Beast that if the course “can inspire even a small portion of the people who take the course to take steps in their communities to increase access to safe abortion and decrease stigma about abortion, then we have been totally successful.”
According to World Magazine, Steinauer has a history of promoting abortion among the medical community. She also founded Medical Students for Choice, a non-profit organization that works to reduce stigma against abortion and to promote the incorporation of abortion in medical school curriculum.
As expected, left-leaning news outlets are calling the course revolutionary and claim the reason why women’s access to abortion is so difficult is because people aren’t sufficiently educated about it, nor are health care providers receiving the kind of training they need in abortion care.
Not all physicians agree with this assessment, however.
Donna Harrison, executive director of the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, scoffed at the idea and told World that “obstetricians and gynecologists refuse to do abortions because they choose to adhere to the Hippocratic Oath, not because their education didn’t cover abortions.”
She’s right. Abortion is very unpopular among physicians. World magazine cites a 2011 study published in the journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology which found that 97 percent of OBGYNS had encountered a patient who wanted an abortion, but only 14 percent agreed to perform the procedure.
This refusal wasn’t because they didn’t know how to perform an abortion, Harrison says. “Any OBGYN knows how to empty a uterus at any stage. It’s just that most OBGYN’s recognize that there are two patients.”
Students who finish the course will earn a certificate, and practicing physicians and other health professionals can earn credits for completion.
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