Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin in Washington, D.C., in 2019. Her state of Wisconsin now bans abortion almost entirely under an 1849 law.

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Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin in Washington, D.C., in 2019. Her state of Wisconsin now bans abortion almost entirely under an 1849 law.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Sami Stroebel, an aspiring ob-gyn, opened at the University of Wisconsin in Madison last summer, within weeks of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down constitutional abortion rights. medical school.

“I sat there and thought, ‘How is this going to change the education I’m going to have, how is this going to change the experience I want to provide patients with this kind of care in the future?'”

Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin has an answer to that question.

Today, she and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, are introducing the Reproductive Health Training Act. It established a grant program that provides $25 million a year — over the next five years — to fund medical students leaving the state to study abortion care, as well as programs to train them. This is especially important in a state like Wisconsin that has almost completely banned abortion.

“Students and their supervising clinicians have to travel abroad for training,” Baldwin told NPR. “At the same time, neighboring countries — and this is happening across the United States — are receiving a massive influx of students.”

Stroebel, who co-directs the school chapter of the national advocacy group Medical Students Choice, wanted to learn to provide abortion care. The same procedures and medications used to provide abortion are also needed when a pregnancy ends in miscarriage, as well as in other aspects of women’s health care unrelated to pregnancy.

To become licensed, aspiring OB-GYNs must learn to perform procedures and prescribe medications.but in Dobbs & Jackson Women’s Health, The Supreme Court has essentially made abortion rights an issue for the states.

“Wisconsin brought back the 1849 law where abortion was basically completely illegal unless they said the woman’s life was in imminent danger,” Stroebel said.

Medical schools in Wisconsin and other states with near-total bans cannot teach abortion care.

Baldwin said that since Dobbs The decision, for the record, saw a decline in the number of obstetrics and gynecology residents applying to practice in Wisconsin and other states with bans.

“This exacerbates the state’s already lack of providers for maternity care, cancer screenings and other routine care,” Baldwin said.

Dr. Christina Francis, director of the American Association of Pro-Life OB-GYNs, said medical training in pregnancy care really needs to be better, but from her perspective, it should focus on routine care to address what complicates pregnancy and unsafe issues like pre-eclampsia, diabetes, and all of the things that lead to high cesarean rates in the U.S.

“We need to invest in taking better care of women during and after pregnancy, not investing in ending the life of one of our patients and harming another of our patients in the process,” Francis said.

Research shows that most patients who have had an abortion do not regret having it, and that the procedure is far safer than pregnancy and childbirth itself.

Francis also said that abortion care and other gynecological issues give aspiring doctors all the training they need. “I was trained in a Catholic hospital. We didn’t perform abortions,” Francis said. “We’re well trained in how to empty a woman’s uterus. It’s just part of a normal obstetrics residency.”

But state laws after Dobbs are also upending abortion care.Abortion care training has been an issue for years in states such as Texas, which Dobbs ruling.

Given the new legal environment, Stroebel is unsure how or where she will practice in the future. Currently, she wants to finish her medical education at the public school she attends, but she worries about her classmates and students in other states with abortion restrictions.

“It’s scary to think about, you know, if a lot of OB/GYNs and incoming medical students want this kind of training and they can’t get it in places like Wisconsin, Idaho, Alabama or Texas , do you know what happens to people who need that kind of care in those states?”