ABSTRACT
As her brief description barely hints at, Afrodita’s experience of obtaining an abortion, even in the context of it being both legal and publicly funded, involved navigating the health system, interacting with at least one representative of that system to receive a referral voucher for care, and then coordinating with a contracted clinic to ultimately get the health services she sought-with delays along the way. Such multi-step processes for obtaining care in a national or other public health system are common, and particularly so for reproductive and abortion care (Ostrach, 2013; Gispert Magarolas et al., 2008; de Ramales et al., 2006). Restrictions on public funding for abortion care, or delays and difficulties associated with using such funding affect the ability to access care in a timely manner, and prevent some from obtaining an abortion altogether (Ostrach, 2014; Medoff, 2008; Weitz and Yanow, 2008).
