Abortion access looms over medical residency applications
On her first day of work as an OB/Gyn, Dr. Jane M. Taylor was informed that she was not allowed to administer an abortion at her job, and the doctor resigned.
The medical resident who had refused to do abortions had also resigned from a hospital OB/GYN’s practice, according to The New York Times. Dr. Taylor had asked the hospital to find another doctor to replace her, but the hospital said she would have to resign in order to take on the job.
“No one ever told me that I could not do abortion service at work,” Taylor said in a statement to The New York Times. “Why would they do that? And even if I did not want it done, why would I put my patients in harm?”
The abortion access issue has been a divisive issue in medicine for years now, as anti-abortion activists and doctors fight for a woman’s right to control her own body. However, the issue seems to have become more contentious in the past few years, as abortion availability has increased.
In 2012, Dr. Margaret A. Whitehead, a gynecologist, gave an interview to the New York Times where she announced that all OB/GYN’s who perform abortions are required to resign from their hospital’s OB/GYN department in order to work at a health center that also performs abortions.
“To go out and tell a woman that she could not do abortions – with the federal government essentially telling an abortion provider that he could not perform abortions or that he could not do abortions at his private practice,” she told the newspaper the following month.
In November of 2015, Dr. Wendy Wright, an OB/GYN, announced that her hospital was not allowing physicians who perform abortions to do elective surgeries, according to the Associated Press.
The OB/GYN specialist who works with Planned Parenthood told NPR that some of her abortion-minded physicians have even left their practices.
“We have one or two of our physicians who are very pro-choice, but the majority are much more ambivalent about abortion,” said
