Abortion, emotions, and health provision: Explaining health care professionals' willingness to provide abortion care using affect theory

Deirdre Niamh Duffy,Claire Pierson,Caroline Myerscough,Diane Urquhart,Lindsey Earner-Byrne

doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2018.09.002

Abstract

This article interrogates health care professionals' (HCPs) decision to withdraw from or provide abortion care using cultural theories of affect and emotion. It argues that emotional reactions to imagined futures influence the actions of health care practitioners. This proposition draws together cultural theory of affect with qualitative evidence from a scoping study of abortion care and Ireland. Our analysis suggests that discussions as to why care is or is not provided need to look at the emotional entanglements and affective feel of (written) legal frameworks from the position of the subjects of those frameworks as well as the frameworks themselves. In doing so, our interrogation provides critical insight for considerations of abortion access in the Irish context and globally. This is an important contribution given the concurrent global debates about why abortion care is or is not provided and how to ensure abortion is completely accessible.

Highlights

This article interrogates health care professionals' (HCPs) decision to withdraw from or provide abortion care using cultural theories of affect and emotion
As we noted in the introduction, current law and policy's curtailment of HCPs' ability to provide abortion care is obvious, their ‘on the ground’ interactions and navigation of the law - how they care, what they offer, and why - is more opaque
As De Zordo and others highlight, HCPs make decisions on what practices to engage in or not based on issues unrelated to what legal frameworks say on a daily basis

Summary

Introduction

This article interrogates health care professionals' (HCPs) decision to withdraw from or provide abortion care using cultural theories of affect and emotion. It argues that emotional reactions to imagined futures influence the actions of health care practitioners. This proposition draws together cultural theory of affect with qualitative evidence from a scoping study of abortion care and Ireland. Our interrogation provides critical insight for considerations of abortion access in the Irish context and globally. This is an important contribution given the concurrent global debates about why abortion care is or is not provided and how to ensure abortion is completely accessible

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Conclusion