Still going in a worrying direction.
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.
“It should be concerning for states with severe restrictions on reproductive rights that so many new physicians — across specialties — are choosing to apply to other states for training instead,” wrote Atul Grover, executive director of the AAMC’s Research and Action Institute.
The AAMC analysis found the number of applicants to OB-GYN residency programs in abortion ban states dropped by 6.7%, compared with a 0.4% increase in states where abortion remains legal. For internal medicine, the drop observed in abortion ban states was over five times as much as in states where abortion is legal.
In its analysis, the AAMC said an ongoing decline in interest in ban states among new doctors ultimately “may negatively affect access to care in those states.”
Jack Resneck Jr., immediate past president of the American Medical Association, said the data demonstrates yet another consequence of the post-Roe v. Wade era.
The AAMC analysis notes that even in states with abortion bans, residency programs are filling their positions — mostly because there are more graduating medical students in the U.S. and abroad than there are residency slots.
Still, Resneck said, “we’re extraordinarily worried.” For example, physicians without adequate abortion training may not be able to manage miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, or potential complications such as infection or hemorrhaging that could stem from pregnancy loss.
See here, here, here, and here for more. I recommend you go look at the linked article, because you can search by state and by specialty. It’s not just OB/GYNs who are not coming to Texas, pediatrics and other specialties are also falling behind. This is a slow-burn problem, one that may not become acute for a generation, when many of the current villains will have shuffled off the stage, but it’s coming, and if nothing changes it’s going to get bad. It already is bad for poorer patients and people in rural areas. It’ll catch up to us affluent city folks soon enough. Don’t say we weren’t warned.
I figure we’ll know the brain drain has really gotten bad when the applications to Rice drop. Were I in the shoes of the newly minted graduates, I’d be trying hard to find a job out of state.