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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.
Yeah it also says don’t cut for stones (kidney stones), but I don’t see us casting urology out of medicine and letting people die of ureter obstructions. Doctors also don’t generally worship Apollo anymore, to the best of my knowledge.
Turns out standards of care and what is possible or safest have evolved since ancient Greece.
Doctors don’t take the literal original hipppcratic oath. There’s a ton of junk in there no one would want doctors to follow. It’s most common for each medical student class to create their own oath in the spirit of the hipppcratic oath when entering medical school, and then take that, or use a modernized version. And yes, vowing to do no abortions would absolutely conflict with “do no harm” in the modern age, and would lead to the needless suffering and death of pregnant individuals.