Educate Yourself: The First-Ever Online Class About Abortion Is Coming
Abortion is a hot-button issue these days, what with a Texas ruling leading to the closure of many abortion clinics in the state, Missouri enacting a 72-hour wait period for abortions, and the Supreme Court being asked to take action on many of these restrictions. But while the topic ignites fiery passions in those for and against the procedures, the truth is that many Americans remain uneducated on both the medicine behind abortions and their history in American culture. One university, however, is trying to change that.
Coursera is a free, online platform that allows users to
enroll
in and participate in classes taught by higher education professors in institutions all over the world. Though Coursera has featured classes in subjects ranging from Calculus One to Scandinavian film and television, it’s never tackled the issue of abortion education until now.
Beginning
last Fall, the University of California San Francisco began to offer a six-week course titled “Abortion: Quality Care and Public Health Implications.” The class will cover: “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 need for more classes such as this one can’t be overestimated. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that at least half of American women will have an unintended pregnancy by age 45, and thirty percent of women will have an abortion by that age. And with American educators more intent on teaching abstinence over safe sex practices, the numbers aren’t likely to see big reductions any time soon.
Dr. Jody Steinauer, creator of the
online course
, has a more realistic approach to education. “Unintended pregnancies happen and women will access abortion,” she explained in an interview with the Daily Beast. And because of this Steinauer argues that we must ask ourselves: “How can we, as a community that cares about women, help to decrease morbidity and mortality from unsafe abortions? How can we make abortions safer? How can we make them more accessible?”
Whatever your views on abortion may be, until the day when people around the world are educated enough to prevent undesired pregnancies entirely, at least we can teach them to be safe about the means by which they go about terminating those pregnancies, no?
[Pic via Flickr - US Army Corps of Engineers Europe District]
