Abortion care is one of the most common medical procedures in the U.S., yet even before the fall of Roe v. Wade, doctors and students had to navigate tricky legal and educational hurdles to train as abortion providers. With last month’s Supreme Court decision freeing states to ban abortions, those barriers are growing.
Some abortion advocates are warning that recent moves could aggravate the nationwide shortage of trained abortion providers, making the procedure scarcer — even in blue states that are acting to guarantee access — than first thought.
“At the end of the day, we can't train people to provide abortion care if we can't provide abortion care,” said DeShawn Taylor, an obstetrician-gynecologist who is the owner and primary provider at Desert Star Family Planning in Phoenix.
