Abortion, Austerity, CatSalut, & Crisis: Women’s Experiences of Navigating the Catalan Health System to Access Care

Please join us for a presentation by Bayla Ostrach, MA, PhD, Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine. Ostrach will discuss women's experiences navigating the Catalan health system to access abortion in the context of legal threats, La Crisis, and growing support for the independence movement. This vivid ethnography of women navigating the Catalan health system to access publicly funded abortion care in the context of austerity-related cuts and threats to the abortion laws explores the impact of the current global economic crisis on health care-seeking behavior, the actual accessibility of national health systems, disparities that persist for immigrants even in a country that offers health coverage to undocumented residents, and women’s diverse approaches to overcoming obstacles to abortion care. Using the example of Catalunya as a case study in the larger global landscape of people’s experiences accessing publicly funded health care in a setting of policy changes and austerity, participants describe their efforts to use the Catalan health system to obtain abortion, which at the time of the fieldwork described had recently become more widely legal, discuss their awareness of shifting abortion laws and reproductive rights; and, for some, their vision of full Catalan independence as one avenue for preserving full access to abortion and other publicly funded health services despite La Crisis, austerity, and the increasing Euro-zone and Spanish pressures on Catalunya to cut services for immigrants. Through participants’ voices, a compelling portrait of perseverance in the face of, and resistance to, bureaucratic oppression and economic inequality emerges, accompanied by the author’s richly grounded analysis of what these stories reveal about health care systems amid the crisis of capitalism, reproductive governance, and women’s determination to do whatever they have to do get the health care they need.