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- Medical students are choosing residency programs based on where they can learn about abortion care.
- Over 76% of nearly 500 med students surveyed said they'd choose a residency based on abortion access.
- They said they want abortion access for their patients but also for themselves.
Aspiring doctors are choosing their residency programs based on where they can provide abortion care to patients, a new survey found.
After completing medical school, new physicians continue training in a residency program where they can get hands-on experience and home in on their desired specialty.
A survey of nearly 500 third and fourth-year med students found that over 76% of them would "likely or very likely" choose residency programs based on abortion access, according to the survey published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Medical Ethics.
Additionally, over 72% of med students surveyed said abortion access would influence where they would start their own families, and nearly 58% said it would influence their contraception decisions.
"In qualitative responses, medical trainees highlighted the importance of abortion access for their patients, themselves, and their loved ones," the survey's abstract read. "For personal and professional reasons, reproductive healthcare access is now a key factor in residency match decisions."
Shortly after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022, multiple medical students told Business Insider that they would have to make residency decisions based on where they could learn the full scope of the practice of obstetrics and gynecology.
"It definitely is looking more and more difficult in terms of making sure I have access to education that's not only relevant to my desire to become an abortion provider but also just relevant to the practice of obstetrics and gynecology as a field and making sure that we're providing quality care to our patients," Eshani Dixit, then a medical student at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, told Business Insider last year.
Case in point: Dixit is now a resident physician at a hospital in Illinois, where abortion remains legal.