"More than thirty-five years after women won the right to legal abortion, most people do not realize how inaccessible it has become. In these pages, reproductive-health researcher Carole Joffe shows how a pervasive stigma-cultivated by the religious right-operates to maintain barriers to access by shaming women and marginalizing abortion providers. Through compelling testimony from doctors, health-care workers, and patients, Joffe reports the lived experiences behind the polemics, while also offering hope for a more compassionate standard of women's health care." --publisher's description.

Preface -- The Stigma of Abortion -- "You Need a Community with You": Becoming an Abortion Provider -- The Clinics: Ground Zero in the Abortion Wars -- Regulating Abortion -- Hospital-Based Abortions: Chaos, Cruelty, and Some Accommodation -- Abortion Patients and the "Two Americas" of Reproductive Health -- "Every Woman Is Different": What Good Abortion Care Looks Like -- What Kind of America Do We Want? -- Afterword: "Abortion Is a Perfectly Proper Noun" -- Postscript The Legacy of George Tiller -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index