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According to new statistics from the Association of American Medical Colleges, for the second year in a row, students graduating from U.S. medical schools were less likely to apply this year for residency positions in states with abortion bans and other significant abortion restrictions.
Since the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, state fights over abortion access have created plenty of uncertainty for pregnant patients and their doctors. But that uncertainty has also bled into the world of medical education, forcing some new doctors to factor state abortion laws into their decisions about where to begin their careers.
Fourteen states, primarily in the Midwest and South, have banned nearly all abortions. The new analysis by the AAMC — a preliminary copy of which was exclusively reviewed by KFF Health News before its public release — found that the number of applicants to residency programs in states with near-total abortion bans declined by 4.2%, compared with a 0.6% drop in states where abortion remains legal.
Notably, the AAMC’s findings illuminate the broader problems abortion bans can create for a state’s medical community, particularly in an era of provider shortages: The organization tracked a larger decrease in interest in residencies in states with abortion restrictions not only among those in specialties most likely to treat pregnant patients, like OB-GYNs and emergency room doctors, but also among aspiring doctors in other specialties.
If you live in northern Idaho, your most likely going to be giving birth in Washington. OB/GYN access is drying up in Boise too. Soon you won’t be able to get prenatal care at all in Idaho and any birth done will be in the emergency room. Y’know, sharing a space with the dying, car crash survivors, gunshot victims and people with mangled up limbs from threshers and shit.
Can you see the setting? Babies coming NOW, so off you go. So tranquil and serene. Full of peace and welcoming these Republican birthing/trauma units… but that’s because the nurses just turned off the machines for Tony, who was rushed in blackened and still steaming from a structure fire finally stopped breathing. So just don’t look in that direction, we’ll get you discharged after youve passed the placenta and set up payments on this $50,000 delivery experience.
Aaaaaaah. America.