Doctors across the country are raising concerns that medical students might not be trained enough in abortion procedures or scenarios involving pregnancy complications in the aftermath of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
That is especially true in states such as Texas, where penalties for providing abortions are harsh.
When Texas Republicans enacted what at the time was the most restrictive abortion law in the country just over a year ago, Nikita Kakkad, 20, said she was deeply frustrated.
The news inspired her to take action at the University of Texas at Austin, where she’s a junior. Kakkad passed around free contraceptives and pregnancy tests and runs an Instagram account where she shares information. She’s now working to implement a vending machine with those products on campus.
"I just want young people to know that it's OK to reach out for help and know what resources are there and also that they shouldn't feel ashamed about any of it,” Kakkad told Spectrum News.
Kakkad is interested in the field of obstetrician gynecology, but the lifelong Austinite is rethinking where to go to medical school now that training is limited because most abortions are banned in Texas. She acknowledges that while medical students don't start out doing procedures on an actual person, but instead perform them on demos and simulations, that's not good enough.
“They're not going to get any more training past doing it on a simulation," she said. "And that, quite frankly, is not acceptable to me for the kind of medical education and residency education that I want to get. And so yes, I am looking outside of Texas for medical school and beyond."
After the U.S. Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion, doctors have expressed concern that abortion restrictions in states will limit training for future medical providers and affect their experience with emergency complications and miscarriage management.
"I think trainees are losing access to lots of different early pregnancy complications," Dr. Amber Truehart, medical director at the Center for Reproductive Health at the University of New Mexico, told Spectrum News. "It's gonna be a problem right later on, when there are attendings, and they don't know how to do a dilation and curettage, or they don't know how to manage an ectopic pregnancy."
“One of the very early steps is being comfortable inside of the uterus, right?" Dr. Truehart added. "And that can come from abortion care or miscarriage management. But trainees have to learn how to dilate a cervix and know that they're in the uterus to be safe. "
Truehart says if they're not "getting that basic training, like early on in their residency or fellowship, that's going to affect their ability to perform full care later on.”
Doctors in New Mexico are seeing a surge of pregnant Texans who’ve traveled to their states because abortion rights are protected.
Dr. Smita Carroll, fellow physician, Complex Family Planning at The University of New Mexico School of Medicine, told Spectrum News that she believes her training was critical to healthy patient outcomes.
“I really think it's a huge loss for the medical trainees that need this fundamental training as part of their care." Dr. Carroll said. "And ultimately, it's not just about the training."
Carroll says it always comes back to patient care and the lack of training in parts of the country is going to result in patients having less access to care as well.
"I knew that one of the most important, factors for me in my future training was the ability to help individuals make the best decisions for their bodies,” she added.
Anti-abortion rights groups argue the laws are clear there are exceptions to providing an abortion that could risk the life of the mother. But researchers at Parkland Health and UT Southwestern Medical Center in North Texas found uncertainty around the laws resulted in doctors delaying care and doubling the risk to pregnant patients.