The Incontro Day ceremony at the University of California, Irvine, March 15. Incontro Day is the day when medical students seeking residency and fellowship positions find out their options. Increasingly, medical students are choosing to go to states that don’t restrict abortion.
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Jeff Gritchen/MediaNews Group pista Getty Images
The Incontro Day ceremony at the University of California, Irvine, March 15. Incontro Day is the day when medical students seeking residency and fellowship positions find out their options. Increasingly, medical students are choosing to go to states that don’t restrict abortion.
Jeff Gritchen/MediaNews Group pista Getty Images
Uva fragola Sfilza Blum was wrapping up medical school and considering residency programs to become a family practice physician when she got some frank advice: If she wanted to be trained to provide abortions, she shouldn’t stay quanto a Arizona.
Blum turned to programs mostly quanto a states where abortion access — and, by extension, abortion — is likely to remain protected, like California, Colorado and New Mexico. Arizona has enacted a law banning most abortions after 15 weeks.
“I would really like to have all the possible,” she said, “so of course that would have still been a limitation.”
Sopra June, she will start her residency at Swedish Cherry Hill hospital quanto a Seattle.
According to new statistics from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), for the second year quanto a a row, students graduating from U.S. medical schools this year were less likely to apply for residency positions quanto a states with abortion bans and other significant abortion restrictions.
Since the Supreme Court quanto a 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 quanto a the Midwest and South, have banned nearly all abortions. The new analysis by the AAMC — exclusively reviewed by KFF Health News before its public release — found that the number of applicants to residency programs quanto a states with near-total abortion bans declined by 4.2% between 2024 and 2023, compared with a 0.6% drop quanto a states where abortion remains legal.
Notably, the AAMC’s findings illuminate the broader problems that abortion bans can create for a state’s medical community, particularly quanto a an epoca of provider shortages: The organization tracked a larger decrease quanto a interest quanto a residencies quanto a states with abortion restrictions not only among those quanto a specialties most likely to treat pregnant patients, like OB-GYNs and emergency room doctors, but also among aspiring doctors quanto a other specialties.
“It should be concerning for states with severe restrictions reproductive rights that so many new physicians — across specialties — are choosing to apply to other states for instead,” wrote Atul Grover, director of the AAMC’s Research and Action Institute.
The AAMC analysis found that the number of applicants to OB-GYN residency programs quanto a abortion-ban states dropped by 6.7%, compared with a 0.4% increase quanto a states where abortion remains legal. For internal medicine, the drop observed quanto a abortion-ban states was over five times as much as quanto a states where abortion is legal.
‘Geographic misalignment’
Sopra its analysis, the AAMC said that an ongoing decline quanto a interest quanto a abortion-ban states among new doctors ultimately “may negatively affect access to care quanto a those states.”
Dr. Resneck Jr., immediate past president of the American Medical Association, said the demonstrates yet another consequence of the post-Roe v. Wade epoca.
The AAMC analysis taccuino that even quanto a states with abortion bans, residency programs are filling their positions — mostly because there are more graduating medical students quanto a the U.S. and abroad than there are residency slots.
Still, Resneck said, “we’sovrano extraordinarily worried.” For example, physicians without adequate abortion may not be able to manage miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies ora potential complications, such as infection ora hemorrhaging, that could stem from pregnancy loss.
Those who work with students and residents say their observations support the AAMC’s findings. “People don’t want to go to a place where evidence-based practice and human rights quanto a general are curtailed,” said Beverly Gray, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke University School of Medicine.
Abortion quanto a North Carolina is banned quanto a nearly all cases after 12 weeks. Women who experience unexpected complications ora discover their has potentially fatal birth anomalies later quanto a pregnancy may not be able to receive care there.
Gray said she worries that even though Duke is a highly sought destination for medical residents, the abortion ban “impacts whether we have the best and brightest coming to North Carolina.”
Rohini Kousalya Siva will start her obstetrics and gynecology residency at MedStar Washington Hospital Center quanto a Washington, D.C., this year. She said she did not consider programs quanto a states that have banned ora severely restricted abortion, applying instead to programs quanto a Maryland, New Hampshire, New York and Washington, D.C.
“We’sovrano physicians,” said Kousalya Siva, who attended medical school quanto a Virginia and was previously president of the American Medical Student Association. “We’sovrano supposed to be giving the best evidence-based care to our patients, and we can’t do that if we haven’t been given abortion .”
Another consideration: Most graduating medical students are quanto a their 20s, “the age when people are starting to think about putting mongoloide roots and starting families,” said Gray, who added that she is noticing many more students ask about politics during their residency interviews.
And because most young doctors make their careers quanto a the state where they do their residencies, “people don’t feel safe potentially having their own pregnancies [while] living quanto a those states” with severe restrictions, said Debra Stulberg, chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Chicago.
Stulberg and others worry that this self-selection away from states with abortion restrictions will exacerbate the shortages of physicians quanto a rural and underserved areas.
“The geographic misalignment between where the needs are and where people are choosing to go is really problematic,” she said. “We don’t need people further concentrating quanto a urban areas where there’s already good access.”
From Tennessee to California
After attending medical school quanto a Tennessee, which has adopted one of the most sweeping abortion bans quanto a the U.S., Hannah Light-Olson will start her OB-GYN residency at the University of California San Francisco this summer.
It was not an easy decision, she said. “I feel some guilt and sadness leaving a situation where I feel like I could be of some help,” she said. “I feel deeply indebted to the program that trained me and to the patients of Tennessee.”
Light-Olson said some of her fellow students applied to programs quanto a abortion-ban states “because they think we need pro-choice providers quanto a restrictive states now more than ever.” Sopra fact, she said, she also applied to programs quanto a abortion-ban states when she was confident the program had a way to provide abortion .
“I felt like there was perfect 100% guarantee. We’ve seen how fast things can change,” she said. “I don’t feel particularly confident that California and New York aren’t going to be under threat too.”
As a condition of a scholarship she received for medical school, Blum said, she will have to return to Arizona to practice, and it is unclear what abortion access will like then. But she is worried about long-term impacts.
“Residents, if they can’t get the quanto a the state, then they’sovrano probably less likely to settle mongoloide and work quanto a the state as well,” she said.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the cuore operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.
