Fourteen of the 50 US states currently have a complete ban on abortions following the 2022 overturning of the Roe Vs Wade judgement by the US Supreme Court.
The abortion bans in US states seem to have an unexpected effect on the medical colleges in those states. An analysis by the Association of American Medical Colleges has found that fewer new graduates of U.S. medical schools applied to residency programs in states that banned or restricted access to abortion.
At present, 14 US states – Idaho, Texas, South and North Dakota, Missouri, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Oklahoma – have a complete ban on abortion. This followed the June 2022 decision of the US Supreme Court to overturn the Roe vs Wade judgement that upheld women’s right to decide.
“This analysis examines residency applicant and application data by separating states into three cohorts: those with abortion bans, those with gestational limits, and those without gestational limits or abortion bans. While the number of unique medical school graduates, referred to as “U.S. MD seniors,” who applied to residency programs declined slightly in 2023-2024 from the previous application cycle, states with complete abortion bans saw greater decreases in the number of U.S. MD senior applicants than states with gestational limits or no restrictions. Continued disproportionate decreases in the number of applicants to programs in states with limits or restrictions were observed across all specialties in aggregate,” the study noted. The overall decrease varied from state to state. The average state saw a 10.1% decline in U.S. MD senior applicants, but the change varied by state — ranging from a decrease of 19.3% to an increase of 30.3%.
“States’ abortion-ban status may be correlated with program number and size, but these findings suggest that applicants may be responding to something independent of program size, particularly given two years of similar patterns. In other words, while states with more severe restrictions are often less populous (and have fewer residency programs) than other states, U.S. MD applicants may be selectively reducing their likelihood of applying to programs in states with more state-imposed restrictions on health care regardless of the number of available residency programs,” theorised the analysis done by Atul Grover, executive director AAMC Research and Action Institute and his colleague.
