PUBLIC HEALTH BRIEFS

Connecticut Physicians' Attitudes Toward Abortion GAIL L. PRATT, MSW, MENI KOSLOWSKY, PHD, AND RONALD M. WINTROB, MD While attitudes regarding abortion and its legalization among various segments of the general American public have undergone considerable analysis since the early 1960s1. 3little is currently known about physicians' attitudes.2' 4 In order to obtain more extensive data on the broad range of factors relating to physicians' attitudes toward abortion, all Connecticut-licensed specialists in obstetrics and gynecology and a small sample of family physicians were invited to participate in a study of several aspects of the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components of attitudes toward abortion. In addition to collecting biographic data, interviews focused on changes in attitudes toward abortion and factors related to these changes, concerns and conflicts resulting from the legalization of abortion, and the impact of legalization on the physician's type of relationships with patients, colleagues, hospital, and office staff. This paper reports results of the first phase of this study, completed during the spring of 1974, and is limited to the presentation of data concerning physicians' current opinions of abortion under a range of circumstances. ,

Subjects Phase one was a pilot study of a randomly-selected sample of 40 obstetrician-gynecologists (approximately 10 per cent of the 353) and 25 family physicians (approximately 3 per cent of the 817) currently licensed to practice in Connecticut. Through a stratified random sampling procedure, a total of 46 obstetrician-gynecologists and 48 family physicians were invited to participate in the preliminary study. Of the physicians contacted who are currently in practice, participation of 96 per cent of the obstetrician-gynecologists and 85 per cent of the family physicians was obtained.

Procedure Sixty-five physicians were interviewed; the mean duration of the interview was 58 minutes. Ms. Pratt is an Instructor and Dr. Wintrob is Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, CT 06032. At the time of the study Dr. Koslowsky was Assistant Professor, Department of Behavioral Sciences and Community Health, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, CT; he is now Senior Research Specialist, Drug Abuse Control Commission, New York, NY. Address reprint requests to Ms. Pratt at the Health Center. This paper, presented at the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association, New Orleans, LA, October 1974, was revised and accepted for publication November 9, 1975. 288

The variable "attitude toward abortion" was derived from the physicians' ratings of the evaluative component of their personal reactions to abortion for 11 circumstances under which a woman might request an abortion. Personal reactions in this study refer to subjects' opinions of whether or not a pregnancy should be terminated under each circumstance. The subject's concerns regarding the implications of the physician's roles as an advisor in the decision-making process and as a direct or indirect provider of abortion services were not included as factors influencing personal reactions. Nor were physicians' opinions regarding the legalization of abortion for each circumstance. These related issues were considered separately. Subjects were asked to rate the degree of approval or disapproval of their personal reactions in each case as "strongly approve", "approve with qualifications", "disapprove with qualifications", and "strongly disapprove". Table 1 lists the 11 circumstances and physicians' personal reactions to requests for abortions under each circumstance, rank-ordered by the number of "strongly approve" responses. In order to condense these data to permit the application of the chi-square tests, personal reactions to abortion were divided into the two major categories of approval and disapproval. This dichotomous categorization was used as the dependent variable in the analysis of the relationship of a number of factors to abortion attitudes.

Results The Nature of Abortion Attitudes The classification of physicians' attitudes as approval or disapproval produces a distribution of attitudes with a much greater percentage in the approval category (75 per cent) than in the disapproval category (25 per cent). As Table 1 indicates, however, a gradient of approval and disapproval exists in physicians' personal reactions to abortion under specific circumstances. Twenty-seven physicians (42 per cent) distinguish between medical/psychiatric reasons (Table 1: numbers 1-5) and socioeconomic or personal reasons (Table 1: numbers 61 1) in their reactions to abortion requests. Thirty-eight physicians (58 per cent) do not make this distinction. That is, personal reactions to abortion in the latter group are the same under all of the circumstances. Differences in Attitudes by Specialty The hypothesis that attitudes toward abortion would be related to specialty was tested with the chi-square statistic. The results indicate that there is no significant difference between the abortion attitudes of specialists in obstetrics and gynecology and the abortion attitudes of family physicians. Consequently, all AJPH March, 1976, Vol. 66, No. 3

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Connecticut physicians' attitudes toward abortion.

PUBLIC HEALTH BRIEFS Connecticut Physicians' Attitudes Toward Abortion GAIL L. PRATT, MSW, MENI KOSLOWSKY, PHD, AND RONALD M. WINTROB, MD While attit...
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