Are we ready for self-managed medication abortion? Current practices, attitudes, and knowledge of emergency and primary care physicians
Abortion
Awarded 2022
Emerging Scholars in Family Planning
Xanthia Tucker, MD
University of Michigan
$7,500

Xanthia Tucker is a resident physician in combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Michigan. She plans to become a primary care doctor who offers full-scope family planning. Prior to pursuing medicine, she was a comparative literature major, freelance writer, baker, and health coach at a county hospital. Tucker chose to become a doctor to accompany people through challenging experiences in life and remove barriers to their health and empowerment. She believes that comprehensive family planning, including abortion, is part of primary care. She has been lucky to participate in previous research at the intersection of medicine and social justice – for example, through a qualitative study of trauma-informed care trainings for hospital employees who care for youth affected by gun violence and a quantitative study of the relationship between parenting factors and obesity in sexual minority adolescent girls. In this project, she will explore the intersection between the health system and reproductive justice through the lens of self-managed medication abortion. As more patients turn outside the health system to terminate undesired pregnancies, some will nonetheless seek evaluation for possible complications in emergency departments and primary care offices. This study aims to explore the current practices, knowledge, and attitudes of physicians outside obstetrics and gynecology who take care of these patients, with the goal of 1) expanding the pool of providers who can provide follow-up care after a self-managed medication abortion, 2) identifying intervenable knowledge gaps among these physicians, and 3) finding common ethical ground in a politically fragmented environment.