Will Abortion Restrictions Cause an OB-GYN Brain Drain?

Post-Roe rhetoric continues to reach new levels of rumor, scare tactics, and red herrings. Take a recent headline from Scientific American, “Abortion Restrictions Could Cause an Ob-Gyn Brain Drain.” The implication is most doctors want to offer abortion so badly, they’ll leave medicine if they can’t.  

The truth, however, seems to be the opposite.  

The LA Times reported, from a 2019 survey of American OB-GYNs, that “while nearly 3 out of 4 had a patient who wanted to end a pregnancy in the past year, fewer than 1 in 4 were willing and able to perform one themselves.”  

For some, the reasons were pragmatic. Many others cited pro-life convictions. As Dr. Donna Harrison of the Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists put it, “We have two patients: both the unborn child and the mother. As physicians, we’ve taken the Hippocratic oath… we don’t kill our patients.” 

That’s the actual heart of the issue.  Doctors are there to heal, not kill. It’s not hard to tell the difference.