Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-18-2023
Abstract
As a lawyer, I have long been interested in the gap between law and the books and law in practice. In 2008, this curiosity led me to Latin America, where I began studying the impact of the world's most restrictive abortion bans. My first stop was Chile, which at the time banned abortion under all conditions–– there was not even an exception to save women's lives. Raised on the history of what happened when abortion was illegal in the United States prior to Roe v. Wade, I knew asking doctors to share their experiences was one way to gauge the impact of abortion bans. I went to Chile expecting to hear stories of women dying from the consequences of unsafe abortions. The doctors I interviewed quickly disabused me of that idea by firing up their old desktop computers, and with a few clicks showing me how simple it was to buy abortion medicine from guys in backpacks, right on the city's main street.
Automated Citation
Michelle Oberman,
Against Silence: Why Doctors are Obligated to Provide Abortion
, 26 J. Health Care L. & Pol'y 265
(2023),
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/facpubs/1017