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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.
My sister is overseas and planning to come back stateside in a few years. She wanted to move back to Texas to be close to the rest of the family but says, “I can’t risk living in Texas if I want to have more kids”. My friend’s gyno gave her the hard sell on having her tubes tied recently, because there’s nothing that can be done for her if she gets pregnant. I know a guy who works in a Houston ER, who is getting increasingly weird policies from his administrators when it comes to treating pregnant patients, because nobody wants to risk taking on liability for a miscarriage or still birth.
These are all the “unforeseen” consequences of the new abortion laws. And it certainly doesn’t help that states with shit abortion laws already had 50-300% higher maternal mortality rates and infant mortality rates before these laws were passed.
The so-called pro-life agenda is directly leading to few people having kids and more people losing access to health care.
Pro-Life is going to get a ton of people killed.