Are pro-life laws affecting abortion training and recruitment to OB/GYN programs?

Indiana University (IU) is making changes to its OB/GYN medical program, due to the state’s laws protecting preborn children from abortion. Some people involved with the program are bemoaning the fact that future doctors in the program will no longer be trained in-state to kill preborn children.

Students in the program will reportedly no longer receive abortion training on campus, and instead will travel out of state twice a week, for five weeks, to learn how to commit abortions.

”It’s a recruitment nightmare,” said former resident Dr. Beatrice Soderholm, who added that she believes the state’s abortion laws will result in fewer students pursuing a degree in the school. ”That’s going to play into more of a recruitment aspect, even getting people to come here for training let alone, stay, choosing to stay for permanent practice.”

Dr. Nicole Scott, the director of IU School of Medicine’s residency program, told Fox 59 she agreed. “May we be less attractive to those medical students looking at residency? Yes, because they can’t get the training that they need,” she said, adding that the inconvenience of sending students elsewhere so they can learn how to commit abortions is a “logistics nightmare.”

Despite these warnings, OB/GYNs do not “need” induced abortion training to be successful at caring for women and preborn babies.

Abortions are brutal procedures in which a preborn child is starved, suctioned, torn apart, or poisoned. A doctor does not need to learn the methods for killing a child in order to have a successful practice. If a mother’s life is at risk, early delivery may be necessary, which does not intentionally kill (abort) the preborn child even though the child may be born too soon to survive. Abortion is the intentional homicide of an undelivered human being.

Abortion Procedures: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Trimesters

In fact, studies show that the vast majority of OB/GYNs do not commit abortions and therefore, abortion training is not an integral part of a solid medical program. A national survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation reported in 2021 that just 23% of OB/GYNs commit abortions. And a recent study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found that only 27.1% of medical residents said they expect to commit abortions in their future practice.

While the numbers vary, it is clear that the vast majority of OB/GYNs don’t consider abortion an important component of their practice.

This was the reality shared by Dr. Alicia Thompson in a 2021 episode on the Coming Home Network. “I think one of the common misconceptions that people have about OB/GYNs in training, or about OB/GYNs even in practice is that we spend lots of time or money and resources around abortion when, in fact, we really don’t,” she said on the program.

Thompson noted that opposition to abortion isn’t considered extreme, especially within the OB/GYN community. “You’re actually much more well-received than you would expect, because while the common stereotype is that all OB/GYNs are vehemently pro-choice, that doesn’t translate into what we’re doing in our lives,” she said. “So when you actually say, ‘I don’t want to,’ you’re met with a large group of companions and peers who agree with you.”