Author: Carole Joffe

Carole Joffe is a professor at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) and a professor of sociology emerita at the University of California, Davis. She is the co-author of the forthcoming book After Dobbs: How the Supreme Court Ended Roe But Not Abortion.

The Legacy of Dr. Warren Hern: Abortion Provider, Women’s Health Advocate and Target of Hate

After more than 50 years of providing abortions, Dr. Warren Hern of Boulder, Colo. will retire on Jan. 22 of this year. For 50+ years, he has been one of the most high-profile—and controversial—abortion doctors in the United States. This controversy has stemmed from his work as one of only a handful of providers to perform abortions in the late second trimester and the third trimester of pregnancy.

Though only about 1.5 percent of abortions in the U.S. take place after 20 weeks’ gestation, often due to lethal or serious fetal anomalies or health emergencies of pregnant women, those who perform such abortions have been subject to an even higher level of violence and harassment than that of other providers. One of the most traumatic events of Hern’s life was the loss of his close friend and colleague, Dr. George Tiller, also a provider of later abortions, who was assassinated in his church by an antiabortion zealot after being assailed for years as “Tiller the Killer,” including by a Fox News personality. A note he received from one patient no doubt reflects the feelings of many: “I can’t put into words my gratitude for your compassion during the hardest time in my life.”

The Real Challenges of Exercising the Right to an Abortion—and What You Can Do About It

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For almost half a century, every American woman has had the constitutional right to an abortion. But—as UCSF sociologist Carole Joffe and Drexel law professor David S. Cohen show in their new book, “Obstacle Course: The Everyday Struggle to Get an Abortion in America”—the reality of exercising one’s reproductive rights is riddled with hurdles designed by anti-abortion activists and politicians.

Contemporary Abortion Politics: Good for the Jews?

This title is, admittedly, at least partially tongue in cheek. It refers to an old Jewish joke from my childhood, where any topic, no matter how seemingly unrelated, always came back to this question. But on a more serious note, the centrality of the abortion issue in this presidential election season has led me to […]

When “Just Ask Your Doctor” Doesn’t Work

For a woman to ‘ask her physician’ for a safe and effective contraceptive presupposed that she had a physician, that she could afford a contraceptive, and that the physician would be willing to give it to her, regardless of her marital status. These are the words of the historian Sheila Rothman, writing about the setbacks […]

Will Obama Betray the Other 99 Percent?

There is another 99 percent group in our country, distinct from but inextricably entwined with the now more familiar #99Percent, those everyday Americans, who–in such a brilliant framing by the Occupy Wall Street movement–are to varying degrees affected by the vast economic inequality that characterizes American society. I refer to the 99 percent of American […]

Nebraska Abortion Law Has Chilling Effect

What does “informed consent” from a patient mean to an abortion provider? The following passage comes from the chapter on “Informed consent, patient education and counseling” which appears in a recent edition of the leading textbook on abortion care in the United States, Management of Unintended and Abnormal Pregnancy: Comprehensive Abortion Care: Informed consent is […]