ABSTRACT
Susan Golden* is a family practice physician in the rural Midwest. Like most in this specialty, she and her partner practice obstetrics, pediatrics, nursing home visits, treatment of heart disease and hypertension, and so on. Unlike most of their colleagues in family practice, they also provide the women in their community with “medical” abortions using the drug mifepristone (also known as “RU-486” or “the French abortion pill”). If Dr Golden’s practice did not offer this service, these patients would have to drive over three and a half hours to the nearest city that has a freestanding abortion clinic, and, there, they would receive a conventional vacuum aspiration or “surgical” abortion.
