Nearly half of U.S. doctors may not receive abortion training if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade this June, according to a study published earlier this week by researchers at the University of California San Francisco and Los Angeles, reports The Hill.
The study, which analyzed how abortion training would be impacted if the high court overturns the 1973 landmark decision that ruled a state law banning abortion was unconstitutional, found that 44% of current obstetrics and gynecology residents would likely lack access to in-state abortion training.
In 2020, 92% of OB-GYN residents reported having access to some level of abortion training.
"Those are skills I got in my abortion training that I use every single day in all of the nonabortion care that I do," Kavita Vinekar, assistant clinical professor at the University of California-Los Angeles and first author of the study, said in a statement.
Researchers mapped OB-GYN residency programs across the U.S. and used estimates from abortion rights advocacy group the Guttmacher Institute to produce its findings.
The Guttmacher Institute estimates that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion, with 22 already having laws or constitutional amendments in place that would allow them to ban abortion as quickly as possible.
Jody Steinauer, director of Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at University of California-San Francisco and senior author of the study, told the Hill that decimating abortion training in half of the country "will have far-reaching impacts. It could affect the care of future patients of clinicians who trained in these states where they go on to practice.
"We need to develop new and innovative ways to train OB-GYNs and other clinicians to provide this essential care."
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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