In this article, we examine retrospective accounts of health care workers who participated in the Population Council’s clinical trials of mifepristone (RU-486) between October 1994 and September 1995. We conducted focus group interviews with 78 health care providers at 17 sites around the USA, after the clinical trials of mifepristone (RU-486) were completed. We discuss providers’ reflections upon power dynamics between them and their clients during the clinical trials, as well as the implications of these changes on the future provision of non-surgical abortion. Caregivers tend to see mifepristone users as more ‘empowered’ than women having surgical abortions, and see themselves as losing power over their clients’ abortion experiences. They offer nuanced and ambivalent assessments of the role of empowerment in their clients’ motivations and experiences as mifepristone users. They tend to view the method as responsible for generating more egalitarian clinical interactions (and to endorse it as such), but the variation present in their evaluations demonstrates most clearly the power of caregivers’ interpretative work in shaping clinical interactions. In assessing their experiences with mifepristone, caregivers demonstrate their interpretative work ‘on’ clients, which is enmeshed with their sense of who they are as medical workers.
Blanchard, D.A. (1994). The anti-abortion movement and the rise of the religious right: From polite to fiery protest. New York: Twayne.
2.
Blanchard, D.A. and Prewitt, T.J. (1993). Religious violence and abortion: The Gideon project. Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
3.
Brandt, A.M. (1985). No magic bullet: A social history of venereal disease in the United States since 1880. New York: Oxford University Press.
4.
Chambliss, D.F. (1996). Beyond caring: Hospitals, nurses, and the social organization of ethics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
5.
Conrad, P. and Schneider, J.W. (1992 [1980]). Deviance and medicalization: From badness to sickness, expanded edition. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
6.
Ehrenreich, J. (Ed.). (1978). The cultural crisis of modern medicine. New York: Monthly Review Press.
7.
Ellertson, C. , Elul, B. and Winikoff, B. (1997). Can women use medical abortion without medical supervision?Reproductive Health Matters, 9 (May), 149–161.
8.
Ellertson, C. , Simonds, W., Springer, K. and Winikoff, B. (1999). Providing mifepristone-misoprostol medical abortion: The view from the clinic. Journal of the American Women’s Medical Association (JAMWA), 54(2), 91–96, 102.
9.
Faux, M. (1990). Crusaders: Voices from the abortion front. New York: Birch Lane Press.
10.
Fisher, S. (1986). In the patient’s best interest: Women and the politics of medical decisions. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
11.
Fisher, S. (1993). Gender, power, resistance: Is care the remedy? In S. Fisher and K. Davis (Eds.), Negotiating at the margins: The gendered discourses of power and resistance. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
12.
Foucault, M. (1973). The birth of the clinic: An archaeology of medical perception. Trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon.
13.
Foucault, M. (1980 [1978]). The history of sexuality, vol. 1. Trans. R. Hurley. New York: Vintage Books.
14.
Friedson, E. (1986). Professional powers. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
15.
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Cambridge, MA: Polity.
16.
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
17.
Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
18.
Hartsock, N. (1981 [1974]). Political change: Two perspectives on power. In the Quest Staff (Eds.), Building feminist theory: Essays from Quest. New York: Longman.
19.
Hausknecht, R.U. (1995). Methotrexate and misoprostol to terminate early pregnancy. New England Journal of Medicine, 333(9), 537–540.
20.
Joffe, C. (1986). The regulation of sexuality: Experiences of family planning workers. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
21.
Lorber, J. (1984). Women physicians: Careers, status, and power. New York: Tavistock.
22.
Lorber, J. (1997). Gender and the social construction of illness. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
23.
Martin, E. (1987). The woman in the body. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
24.
Melosh, B. (1982). ‘The physician’s hand’: Work culture and conflict in American nursing. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
25.
Mishler, E.G. (1984). The discourse of medicine: Dialectics of medical interviews. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
26.
Oakley, A. (1984). The captured womb: A history of the medical care of pregnant women. Oxford: Blackwell.
27.
Rich, A. (1986 [1979]). What does a woman need to know? In Blood, bread, and poetry: Selected prose, 1979–1985. New York: W.W. Norton.
28.
Rosenberg, C.E. (1987). The care of strangers: The rise of America’s hospital system. New York: Basic Books.
29.
Rothman, B.K. (1982). In labor: Women and power in the birthplace. New York: Norton.
30.
Rothman, B.K. (1986). The tentative pregnancy: Prenatal diagnosis and the future of motherhood. New York: Viking.
31.
Ruzek, S.B. (1978). The women’s health movement: Feminist alternatives to medical control. New York: Praeger.
32.
Schaff, E.A. , Stadalius, L.S., Eisinger, S.H. and Franks, P. (1997). Vaginal misoprostol administered at home after mifepristone (RU486) for abortion. The Journal of Family Practice, 44(4), 353–360.
33.
Shaw, N.S. (1974). Forced labor: Maternity care in the United States. New York: Pergamon.
34.
Silverman, D. (1987). Communication and medical practice: Social relations in the clinic. London: Sage Publications.
35.
Simonds, W. (1991). At an impasse: Inside an abortion clinic. In H.Z. Lopata and J. Levy (Eds.), Current research on occupations and professions, vol. 6. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
36.
Simonds, W. (1996). Abortion at work: Ideology and practice in a feminist clinic. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
37.
Simonds, W. , Ellertson, C., Springer, K. and Winikoff, B. (1998). Abortion, revised: Participants in the US clinical trials evaluate mifepristone. Social Science & Medicine, 46(10), 1313–1323.
38.
Spitz, I.M. , Bardin, C.W., Benton, L. and Robbins, A. (1998). Early pregnancy termination with mifepristone and misoprostol in the United States. New England Journal of Medicine, 339(18), 1241–1248.
39.
Staggenborg, S. (1991). The pro-choice movement: Organization and activism in the abortion conflict. New York: Oxford University Press.
40.
Terry, R. (1989). Operation rescue: The civil rights movement of the nineties. Policy Review, 47(winter), 82–83.
41.
Webb, C. (Ed.). (1986). Feminist practice in women’s health care. Chichester: Wiley.
42.
Winikoff, B. , Ellertson, C., Elul, B. and Sivan, I. (1998). Acceptability and feasibility of early pregnancy termination by mifepristone-misoprostol: Results of a large multi-center trial in the United States. Archives of Family Medicine, 7(4), 360–366.
43.
Zola, I.K. (1978). Medicine as an institution of social control. In J. Ehrenreich (Ed.), The cultural crisis of modern medicine. New York: Monthly Review Press.
