Health Policy in a Time of Crisis: Abortion, Austerity, and Access

Join us for a book discussion with BU Faculty author Bayla Ostrach. Bayla will discuss her new ethnography: Health Policy in a Time of Crisis. This new ethnography lends a human face to the impact of threats to abortion funding and legal abortion. Just as these threats affected women and providers seeking and providing abortion in Catalunya, they also loom over the United States. Narratives from a region in Southern Europe where a grassroots movement led to the liberalization of abortion laws (quickly jeopardized by both a more conservative government and the global economic crisis) offer important lessons for how people respond to reproductive governance, and persevere to access publicly funded health care. The experiences recounted in the book, and at this reading, will reveal what can be done to safeguard reproductive justice and health, and ensure access to abortion.