Many medical assistants get jobs at abortion clinics because it was the job available to them when they need work, not because of a commitment to abortion rights. They find themselves working in one of the most controversial and contested forms of healthcare. At the same time, reproductive politics have increasingly been pulled toward reproductive justice frameworks, with many reproductive healthcare settings seemingly embracing reproductive justice language and priorities.

Using abortion as a case for analysis, A Job with a Cause: Medical assistants finding their place in abortion work provides a backdrop to understanding the experiences of low-status workers in healthcare and how workers in workplace settings centered on contentious social issues engage in and make sense of their jobs. This book tells an intersectional story about how ideologies centered on white feminist approaches to reproductive politics show up in abortion care practices and abortion work. Kelly Marie Ward focuses on abortion’s least visible and valorized workers to offer insight into how far we are from achieving RJ in healthcare settings.