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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 had to choose the possibility of a murder charge and capital punishment for following your oath or simply not, why would anyone opt for the former?
Technically, the oath says not to ever perform an abortion.
I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion.
Though there may be a loophole, since Hippocrates seems to acknowledge the existence of surgeons (“I will not use the knife, […] but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein” ), and his oath doesn’t seem to apply to them.
Pretty sure doctors aren’t taking the literal oath…
I swear by Apollo Healer, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture.
Oh yeah, they don’t! Maybe if you scrolled down to the section that talks about the modern equivalent.
In the 1960s, the Hippocratic Oath was changed to require “utmost respect for human life from its beginning”, making it a more secular obligation, not to be taken in the presence of any gods, but before only other people. When the oath was rewritten in 1964 by Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University, the prayer was omitted, and that version has been widely accepted and is still in use today by many US medical schools:[31]
As of 1993, only 14% of medical oaths prohibited euthanasia, and only 8% prohibited abortion.[33]
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.
Shocker. Who could have seen this coming?!
How long until one of those GOP dipshits tries to pass a law to require that Doctors cannot leave their states?
Have you ever seen a libertarian screeching about how regulations and licensing is the sole determining factor making medical care expensive? I think Repubs will remove medical licensing.
Otherwise banning travel between states is too unconstitutional even at the current corruption level of SCOTUS. Maybe if they can get another couple of Clarences they could do it.
I doubt it will come to this. Instead what they will do is pass laws so that mid level providers can legally practice like physicians. Just make physicians unnecessary. Hospitals love it because PAs are way cheaper to employ. Everyone wins (except for the patient but we don’t need to think about that).
We already have a dire shortage of medical practitioners, especially in rural areas. And some of the states with these bans have a lot of rural areas.
Soon we’ll need Doctors Without Borders to start operations within the US.
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.
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.
