Medical Residents Are Increasingly Avoiding States With Abortion Restrictions - KFF Health News
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A new analysis shows that 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.

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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.

  • bleistift2@feddit.deEnglish
    889·
    6 months ago

    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.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath

    • snooggums@midwest.socialEnglish
      75·
      6 months ago

      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]

    • Ranvier
      27·
      6 months ago

      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.