![]() Heart-wrenching reporting from around the country shows that abortion bans are also imperiling the health of some patients who experience miscarriage and other nonviable pregnancies. Subscribe to KFF Health News' free Morning Briefing. In March, Bonner General Health, the only hospital in Sandpoint, Idaho, announced it would discontinue its labor and delivery services, in part because of “Idaho’s legal and political climate” that includes state legislators continuing to “introduce and pass bills that criminalize physicians for medical care nationally recognized as the standard of care.” ![]() That means fewer doctors to perform critical preventive care like Pap smears and screenings for sexually transmitted infections, which can lead to infertility.Ĭare for pregnant women specifically is at risk, as hospitals in rural areas close maternity wards because they can’t find enough professionals to staff them - a problem that predated the abortion ruling but has only gotten worse since. While applications for OB-GYN residencies were down nationwide, the decrease in states with complete abortion bans was more than twice as large as those with no restrictions (10.5% vs. Indeed, states with abortion bans saw a larger decline in medical school seniors applying for residency in 2023 compared with states without bans, according to a study from the Association of American Medical Colleges. “In other words,” wrote the study’s authors in an accompanying article, “many qualified candidates would no longer even consider working or training in more than half of U.S. In a tweet thread in April, Adams wrote that “the tradeoff of a restricted access (and criminalizing doctors) only approach to decreasing abortions could end up being that you actually make pregnancy less safe for everyone, and increase infant and maternal mortality.”Īn early indication of that impending medical “brain drain” came in February, when 76% of respondents in a survey of more than 2,000 current and future physicians said they would not even apply to work or train in states with abortion restrictions. One recent warning comes from Jerome Adams, who served as surgeon general in the Trump administration. The concern about repercussions for women’s health is being raised not just by abortion rights advocates. And when clinics that provide abortions close their doors, all the other services offered there also shut down, including regular exams, breast cancer screenings, and contraception. ![]() KFF Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner, who has covered health care for more than 30 years, offers insight and analysis of policies and politics in her regular HealthBent columns.ĭoctors are showing - through their words and actions - that they are reluctant to practice in places where making the best decision for a patient could result in huge fines or even a prison sentence. ![]()
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