Some doctors who handle high-risk pregnancies are fleeing restrictive abortion laws. Idaho has been particularly hard hit.
Doctors are warning that the “system will collapse” for labor and delivery care in rural areas, as the post-Roe care crisis worsens across the country. In multiple pieces today, OBGYNs paint a picture of just how delicate the ecosystem is for obstetrics and gynecology—and how abortion bans have damaged these fields.
The New York Times, for example,reported that more than half of Oklahoma’s counties are considered maternity care deserts.
75% of the state’s OBGYNs are either planning or considering leaving the state.
Highly skilled doctors (including those who specialize in handling complex and high-risk pregnancies) are leaving their practices across the country in states like Idaho, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee—like Dr. Rachel Rapkin, who tells the Tampa Bay Times that she is leaving Florida to open a training program in New Zealand amid fears of prosecution.
Some are moving their practices across state lines—like Dr. Wes Adams, who Stat News reports postponed retirement and moved his abortion clinic from Tennessee to southwestern Virginia to ensure abortion access on the state border.
And they are terrified of punitive abortion laws and hostile state legislatures—like Dr. Leilah Zahedi-Spung, a maternal-fetal specialist who left Tennessee because of the “affirmative defense” requirement in the state’s abortion ban that would have forced doctors to prove in court that an abortion they had performed was medically necessary (similar to how a defendant in a homicide case would have to prove self defense). She hired her own criminal defense lawyer before moving to Colorado.
We know that the gap in care caused by the mass OBGYN exodus forced by abortion bans will only grow as more restrictions shake out in court. And patients will bear the brunt of this gutting trend.
