What’s new at ANSIRH

Call for papers at Stigma Research and Action | Diana Greene Foster receives APHA Young Professional Award | Lori Freedman's book Willing and Unable honored by Choice magazine | Tracy Weitz wins Social Scientific Paper Award at NAF conference | Katrina Kimport releases book on internet activism | New review published of Dispatches from the Abortion Wars

Call for papers at Stigma Research and Action

Stigma Research and Action cover

ANSIRH's Kate Cockrill and Katrina Kimport will be two of the guest editors for a special issue of Stigma Research and Action that will focus on abortion stigma. They invite submissions of related work: quantitative and qualitative, domestic and international, from a variety of disciplines. Work by graduate students is encouraged. Topics could include, but are not limited to:

Variation in stigma based on when, where, and from whom one accesses abortion
Variations in perspectives on stigma, from women, providers, and institutions
Comparisons across geography, provider type, legal status
Evaluations of programs to reduce stigma
Structural abortion stigma
Evaluations of tools to measure stigma

Abstracts should be submitted by March 2, 2012 to Kate Cockrill. Full details here.

Diana Greene Foster receives APHA Young Professional Award

Turnaway Study

Dr. Diana Greene Foster, ANSIRH director of research, received the 2011 Outstanding Young Professional award from the American Public Health Association Population, Sexual and Reproductive Health Section. The award was presented on October 31, 2011 at the APHA 139th Annual Meeting and Exposition, held in Washington DC. The award is given to “individuals who deserve recognition early in their careers because of their professional accomplishments, initiative and dedication to the field, especially to the work of the (Population, Sexual and Reproductive Health) section.”

Lori Freedman's book Willing and Unable included in Choice Outstanding Academic Titles of 2011

Dr. Tracy Weitz accepts 2011 Social Scientific Paper Award at National Abortion Federation conference

Choice is a publication of the Association for College & Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association. Each year, the magazine publishes a list of the scholarly titles it deems best among those reviewed that year. The criteria include overall excellence in presentation and scholarship, importance relative to other literature in the field, distinction as a first treatment of a given subject in book or electronic form, originality or uniqueness of treatment, value to undergraduate students, and importance in building undergraduate library collections. This prestigious list brings with it the extraordinary recognition of the academic library community.

We are delighted to announce that Dr. Lori Freedman's book on the constraints doctors encounter in providing abortions has been included in the 2011 list. Read more about the book on ANSIRH's blog and some additional observations from Dr. Freedman on integration of abortion into medical practice.

Tracy Weitz wins 2011 Social Scientific Paper Award at National Abortion Federation conference

Dr. Tracy Weitz accepts 2011 Social Scientific Paper Award at National Abortion Federation conference

We are thrilled to announce that Tracy Weitz, PhD, MPA—ANSIRH Director and co-Principal Investigator for ANSIRH’s Health Workforce Pilot Project (HWPP)—won the 2011 Social Scientific Paper Award at this year’s National Abortion Federation conference for “Training and Evaluating Certified Nurse Midwives, Nurse Practitioners, and Physician Assistants as Providers of Early Aspiration Abortion in California,” a paper reporting on ANSIRH’s HWPP results. Tracy says, “This paper was the most exciting ‘buzz’ at the NAF conference. In the midst of a discouraging amount of state anti-abortion legislation, California is doing something positive to promote access to abortion care.”

Katrina Kimport releases book on internet activism

In collaboration with Dr. Jennifer Earl of University of California, Santa Barbara, Dr. Katrina Kimport of ANSIRH has published a new book, Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age. Now that battles over women's reproductive health coverage have come to dominate Congressional budget discussions, this is particularly relevant reading for those involved in abortion and family planning.

Earl and Kimport examine the impact of ways in which the Web reduces the cost of organized protest and enables activists to work together without physical proximity. A rally can be organized and demonstrators recruited entirely online, without the cost of printing and mailing; an activist can create an online petition in minutes and gather e-signatures from coast to coast using only her laptop. The transformative nature of these changes, Earl and Kimport suggest, demonstrates the need to revisit long-standing theoretical assumptions about social movements.

“If you want to know how Web-based mobilizations, movements, and tactics have irrevocably redefined activism, read this book! It is critical reading for digital media scholars but also a must-read for anyone who cares about grassroots organizing and social change.”

—Mary L. Gray, Dept. of Communication and Culture, Indiana University

“Even as e-tactics have proliferated and commentators have advanced hyperbolic claims for the effectiveness of cyber activism, systematic studies of this brave new world have lagged behind. No more. With their groundbreaking study of ‘digitally enabled social change,’ Earl and Kimport have gone a long way toward filling the void. Must-reading for anyone who hopes to understand online and offline activism in the age of the Internet.”

—Doug McAdam, Professor of Sociology, Stanford University

Carole Joffe’s Dispatches from the Abortion Wars reviewed in Studies in Family Planning

In a detailed three-page review published in the March 2011 issue of Studies in Family Planning, Kristen Shellenberg, Senior Research and Evaluation Associate at Ipas, describes Dr. Carole Joffe's 2009 book Dispatches from the Abortion Wars: The Costs of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us as essential reading for anyone seeking an in-depth understanding of how the ongoing battle concerning abortion in the United States hurts individuals and society.

Dispatches from the Abortion Wars combines research, firsthand accounts, history, and current events, to deliver an extensive account of the impediments to abortion care in America. Joffe spends time with the doctors, patients, and advocates caught up in the abortion battle. She takes an in-depth look at the precarious position of doctors and clinic staff members, and explores the risks they must take on in order to provide abortion services.

After summarizing each of the six chapters of the book, Shellenberg writes “Joffe’s book should be on the reading list of those who have heard you say time and time again why it is that you provide abortions, work at an abortion clinic, support reproductive rights, conduct research on abortion, and so forth. Joffe does an exemplary job of articulating why so many people engage in this battle each day. The answer is simple: Women’s lives are worth fighting for.”

See also our notes on what’s new in the field of reproductive health and rights. And join the Bixby Center distribution listserv to receive notifications of new developments in reproductive health.

For reproductive health news, see ANSIRH’s blog.