Assessing Nursing and Midwifery Students' Attitudes Toward Abortion and Contraception: Results of a National Survey In the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Abstract

Understanding the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is important for a greater understanding of the current state of sexual and reproductive rights of Palestinian women. Constant military occupation has been a determining factor hindering the development of comprehensive and coherent health policies and programmes. As a result of the Oslo Accords and the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement in 1994, the Palestinian National Authority was granted limited authority over portions of the West Bank and Gaza. In 2007-2008 a multi-national, multi-disciplinary study team undertook a national study to assess the reproductive health content of nursing education and identify gaps in curricular coverage and implementation. One component of this project included exploring final year nursing and midwifery students’ attitudes toward a range of sexual and reproductive health issues. This thesis analyzes these data and explores the demographic factors, including gender, region, and residence, associated with nursing and midwifery students’ attitudes toward abortion and contraception-related laws and policies. Our findings suggest that there is a considerable need to incorporate values clarification exercises as well as structured sessions dedicated to laws and policies governing sexual and reproductive health into the formal curricula of programs in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Our results also shed further light on the dynamics shaping abortion and contraception attitudes among health professions students in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.