A challenge for antiabortion states: Doctors reluctant to work there
In a few years, Olgert Bardhi’s skills will be in high demand. A first-year resident in internal medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, he’ll be a full-fledged physician by 2025 in a nation facing a shortage of primary care doctors.
The trouble for Texas: Because of the state’s strict antiabortion laws, Bardhi’s not sure he will remain there.
Although he doesn’t provide abortion care right now, laws limiting the procedure have created confusion and uncertainty over what treatments are legal for miscarriage and keep him from even advising pregnant patients on the option of abortion, he said. Aiding and abetting an abortion in Texas also exposes doctors to civil lawsuits and criminal prosecution.
“It definitely does bother me,” Bardhi said. “If a patient comes in, and you can’t provide them the care that you are supposed to for their well-being, maybe I shouldn’t practice here. The thought has crossed my mind.”
He is balancing his concern with his sense that he can do more good by staying, including counseling patients on obtaining contraception.
Bardhi’s uncertainty reflects a broader hesitancy among some doctors and medical students who are reconsidering career prospects in red states where laws governing abortion have changed rapidly since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, according to interviews with health-care professionals and reproductive health advocates.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/06/abortion-maternity-health-obgyn/?itid=hp-top-table-main
Red states, you have shot yourselves in the lower abdomen. Now deal with the bleeding.
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