The 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision tore away the constitutional right to abortion, allowing states to restrict and outright ban the procedure. Today, abortion is prohibited in 13 states, and it has become harder for OBGYNs to practice and for medical trainees to receive effective training in these states.
However, the Dobbs decision affects more than just the practice of OBGYNs. In states that ban abortion, there has been a decrease in medical residency applicants for all specialties, according to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges. The data was shared by Atul Grover, executive director of the Research & Action Institute at the organization, during a Sunday panel discussion at Engage at HLTH in Las Vegas.
“Across [OBGYN, emergency medicine and family medicine], we saw that people were disproportionately avoiding states where abortion was either illegal completely, or just about completely, were severely restricted by term limits, etc.,” Grover said. “What we didn’t expect to see was that this pattern actually persisted across all specialties. So you might ask, why is a dermatologist worried about whether or not you can do reproductive healthcare?”
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The reason is that “people don’t like the idea of uncertainty in the practice of medicine,” and doctors don’t like having the government involved in their healthcare decisions, he continued.
In addition, people graduating from medical school are often of reproductive age.
“You don’t want to live in a state, much less practice in a state where people are not going to let you have control over your own healthcare, particularly in professional fields where you’ve committed like 12 years of your life to this,” Grover added. “You cannot get thrown off by unintended consequences, nor can you afford to be out of your training or out of your practice for potentially months or a year because of a botched reproductive health procedure.”
Another panelist — Dr. Robbie Harriford, chief medical officer of Kansas City-based Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center — noted that states banning abortion often have other social issues as well.
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“Speaking with other residents in the Kansas City area, when they’re looking at places, those are the main things that they’re looking at: reproductive healthcare and then the social issues,” Harriford stated. “And if you were to kind of overlay a map, those same states that are banning abortion are also the ones that are having those same concerns.”
The Dobbs decision could also create a skills gap between states that restrict abortion and those that don’t, according to the panel.
“For many physicians, they didn’t sign up for [this], and they didn’t sign up to be lawyers,” said Dr. Irene Agostini, former CMO and CMO-liaison at the University of New Mexico Hospital. “They didn’t sign up to go to jail to practice medicine. So they can either stay and be somewhat warriors in those states, which physicians are doing. Or they can say, ‘You know what, I can’t do this. I’m going to leave,’ which puts everybody at risk in those states, in those counties because physicians will leave. That will be a problem for all people of not just reproductive health years. As we move on through our lives, there just will not be physicians.”
Photo: Fokusiert, Getty Images