Are Banned States Losing a Generation of Female OBGYNs?

6.9.26

Click to skip ahead: Georgia Gov. Candidate Thinks Victims Should ‘Prove’ They Were Raped; In the States: Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Michigan, Montana; Anti-Abortion Strategies: CPC Claims to Track ‘Coercion’; Are Banned States Losing A Generation of Female OBGYNs?; Another IVF-Fetal Personhood Conundrum; Have You Had a Medication Abortion?

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Georgia Gov. Candidate Thinks Victims Should ‘Prove’ They Were Raped

A Republican gubernatorial candidate in Georgia wants rape victims to sufficiently ‘prove’ their victimhood to qualify for abortion care.

In newly leaked audio published by HuffPost, Rick Jackson, a billionaire running in a crowded candidate field, agreed with a voter at a community outreach event that women “need to prove” they were raped and that “two wrongs don’t make a right.” As reporter Alanna Vagianos points out, it was just a month ago that Jackson publicly supported abortion exceptions for rape and incest victims.

Already, Georgia’s ban only offers exceptions for life-threatening medical emergencies and no rape exception. Jackson’s campaign told HuffPost he supports the current law as it is.

Jackson’s position that victims should have to ‘prove’ they were raped, and that women and girls would lie about being raped to access abortion care, isn’t new among Republicans.

In 2022, a North Carolina Republican candidate called for a “community-level review process” for rape victims to seek abortion. In 2023, Tennessee considered a bill that would have added a rape exception to the state’s ban—but if victims ‘lied,’ they would face up to three years in prison.

In reality, gender-based violations are impossible to prove in a deeply misogynistic society that doesn’t recognize even the most egregiously violent behaviors—like, say, forced pregnancy—as violent toward women and victims. Victims overwhelmingly don’t report their experiences to law enforcement out of fear of punishment, and around 98% of assailants walk free.

In the States: Arkansas, Indiana, Michigan, Montana, Alabama

In Alabama, fresh off getting crushed in the GOP primary for U.S. Senate, Attorney General Steve Marshall just sent cease-and-desist letters to six groups for advertising abortion pills. This follows similar efforts by anti-abortion politicians in Kentucky and South Dakota, as Republicans escalate their war on free speech to go after ads, billboards, and online info on abortion pills.

Marshall sent the letters to Plan C Pills, Southern Woven, ybycmeds, the UAE-based Abortion Pills in Private, Red State Access, and Cambridge Reproductive Health Consultants. We’ll have more on this late breaking news tomorrow. For now, see Jessica’s past coverage:

The War on Pro-Choice Speech

As if letting women suffer under Arkansas’ abortion ban wasn’t awful enough, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is now trying to hide what her office said—or rather, didn’t say—to a family begging for help in the middle of a medical emergency.

Earlier this year, Abortion, Every Day told you about Emily Waldorf, one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the state’s abortion ban. Waldorf was denied an emergency abortion in 2024 after her water broke 17 weeks into her pregnancy. Without timely abortion care, Waldorf faced the risk of hemorrhage, infection, and death. Not only was she forced to travel out-of-state, but when her family called Sanders’ office for help, an aide said, “What is it you expect the governor’s office to do?” The aide promised to look into the matter and get back to them—which, of course, never happened.

Now, as part of Waldorf’s lawsuit, her attorneys at Amplify are trying to depose the governor. But the attorney general’s office maintains that Sanders has “sovereign immunity”—shielding her not just from deposition, but from disclosing any communications between her office and Waldorf’s family.

Every aspect of this case is infuriating—including that, in April, it was briefly dismissed altogether before being revived last month. (More on that, here.) Waldorf—and every plaintiff in this case—should have been able to receive abortion care in their own communities. And they absolutely shouldn’t be ignored by their ‘pro-life’ governor in the midst of near-death health emergencies.

Meanwhile, anti-abortion extremists are constantly trying to lecture us on history and tradition. Remember when Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito wrote in Dobbs that “abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition”? Now, the far-right Thomas More Society is weighing in on the same.

ICYMI, the Indiana Supreme Court is considering a challenge to the state’s abortion ban on the grounds of religion, thanks to a suit brought by the ACLU of Indiana on behalf of a group called Hoosier Jews for Choice.

But in a new amicus brief filed this week, the Thomas More Society argues abortion can never be considered an “exercise of religion”—claiming abortion is contrary to “natural law” and has never been considered a religious practice. Of course, people of all religions have abortions and abortion has existed all throughout history. And, for the record: abortion bans are an infringement of our collective religious liberty, enforcing a Christian nationalist agenda.

The court is set to hear the case in March, and we’ll make sure to keep you updated.

Over in Michigan, the extremist legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is pressing for the right to discriminate against job applicants based on whether they’ve had abortions.

In a Monday hearing, ADF called on a federal judge to grant a temporary order blocking a 2023 law that prohibits employers from punishing, retaliating against, or refusing to hire abortion patients. ADF, representing two crisis pregnancy centers in the state, claims this somehow amounts to discrimination against religious employers:

“The government can’t force pro-life organizations to sabotage their own beliefs by requiring them to employ staff who endorse abortion—a decision that harms women and ends innocent lives. … The First Amendment protects the right of these organizations to hire employees who can carry out and share the message of hope and joy associated with the gift of life.”

Back in February, state Sen. Erika Geiss rightly pointed out that “the suit is asking for permission to engage in employment discrimination.”

The judge has yet to rule on whether to issue the injunction or not.

In Montana, one city council is considering installing so-called ‘Safe Haven Baby Boxes’ at fire stations. Montanans for Life director Robin Sertell said at a recent council meeting:

“These have saved hundreds of lives and they are something that people support across the board. It doesn’t matter your political or religious affiliation, these poll at about 90% support.”

Sertell notably didn’t cite her sources on that ‘90%’ figure—nor on the claim that baby drop boxes have saved “hundreds of lives.”

It bears reminding: as AED has reported before, ‘baby boxes’ are mostly a means to funnel money to anti-abortion organizations—and are rarely, if ever, used. More importantly, the mothers who use the boxes in moments of crisis are sometimes prevented from regaining custody of their children.

Quick Hits:

• Since Dobbs, Illinois abortion-seekers now travel triple the distance to access abortion;

• And as of today, the telehealth company Hey Jane now offers virtual abortion services in Arizona!

“We need to be doing everything we can at this moment, and that means more than just holding the line – it means finding ways to expand access.”

- Colleen McNicholas, Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana and Kentucky

Anti-Abortion Strategies: CPC Claims to Track ‘Coercion’

Last month, the White House rolled out MOMS.gov: a dystopian government website that directs potential abortion seekers to a data collection tool of Heartbeat International. Heartbeat, as you’ll recall, is the largest network of crisis pregnancy centers in the nation, and is notorious for online data collection.

Last week, Heartbeat announced a “national tracker” of alleged reproductive coercion incidents involving abortion pills. (As we reported in February, 40 Days for Life operates a similar interactive map tracking abortion pill ‘coercion’ cases.)

The irony here, of course, is that like all CPCs, Heartbeat’s CPCs exist to pressure and coerce women to keep pregnancies they don’t want.

CPCs are actively harmful to domestic violence victims. Earlier this year, we spoke to one survivor who told us that when she went to a Florida CPC with her abusive partner, the anti-abortion employees pressured her to stay in the relationship—and told her abuser to do everything he could to stop her from getting an abortion.

Heartbeat’s ‘tracker’ is part of a broader strategy AED has been reporting on since 2023: conservatives are trying to equate abortion access—specifically medication abortion—with ‘coercion’ and ‘abuse.’

The goal is to justify further restrictions under the absurd guise of caring about and protecting women.

For more on abortion access—especially telemedicine abortion access as a lifeline for domestic violence victims—Stateline just published an in-depth feature speaking to survivors and advocates. Elizabeth Ling, associate director of legal services at nonprofit hotline If/When/How, told the outlet she hears from five to 10 women experiencing intimate partner violence per week—sometimes asking about how to legally access medication abortion. One Georgia woman who had an abortion via telemedicine to exit an abusive situation said:

“I didn’t want to be tied to him for life, I didn’t want my daughter, or any of my children, to be tied to him for life. I already had a living child who did not need to be kept in that situation, and if I’d had another one, even if I left him, I mentally would not have been able to handle it.”

Are Banned States Losing A Generation of Female OBGYNs?

Four years after Dobbs, abortion bans are now linked with fewer women applying to medical school in banned states. A new study in PLOS Global Public Health found that while the number of women medical school applicants has been climbing nationally since the end of Roe, that growth has been slower in anti-abortion states—about 71 fewer female applicants a year than the trend would predict. In other words, these women are still becoming doctors—they’re just doing it in states that don’t treat them like criminals.

In general, anti-abortion states have been attracting fewer medical school applicants since Dobbs. A review published in JAMA Health Forum last month found residency applications to banned states have fallen for two years running, and in one survey, 58% of medical students said they were unlikely to even apply to a state with abortion restrictions. We also know OBGYNs have been leaving banned states— the result is more maternal care deserts and worsened maternal health outcomes across banned states.

Abortion restrictions can “meaningfully reshape who practices medicine, and where,” the researchers on female medical school applicants note. The loss of OBGYNs is devastating enough—but the brain drain of women OBGYNs is especially alarming. In a health system that routinely, systematically devalues women’s pain and experiences in our own bodies, we need more women providing reproductive care to address medical misogyny—not fewer.

Speaking of why devotedly pro-choice OBGYNs and reproductive care providers are so essential: the Miscarriage + Abortion (M+A) Hotline just shared new data that shows in the year after Dobbs, contacts to the hotline shot up 210%. A large share of these calls came from people managing their own abortions. Data published in The Lancet Regional Health found that average monthly hotline use in banned states rose from 183 contacts before Dobbs to 640 after Dobbs. And in states without bans, average monthly contacts increased from 125 to 315 over the same period.

Senior researcher Jennifer Karlin says these numbers “tell us patients are continuing to find ways to access care, even in highly restrictive environments, and that real-time medical support has become an essential part of the reproductive health landscape.”

Tellingly, the post-Dobbs rise in calls to M+A from states where abortion remains legal shows that chaos and confusion reign no matter where you live. It certainly doesn’t help that anti-abortion activists and politicians are constantly flooding the zone with disinformation. Organizations like M+A Hotline are a lifeline for those self-managing abortion or experiencing miscarriage—especially at a time of rising state surveillance and pregnancy-related criminalization.

Another IVF-Fetal Personhood Conundrum

As predicted, the consequences of abortion bans have rippled out vastly since Dobbs, including jeopardizing access to IVF: in 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court temporarily ground IVF access in the state to a halt by recognizing unused, frozen embryos as “extrauterine children.” When fetuses and embryos are people, this raises all kinds of potential legal concerns—like custody, who has rights over frozen embryos amid a separation, and whether factors like who is more likely to develop the embryos are worth considering.

The New York Times recently reported on another conundrum involving IVF and fetal personhood: custody battles over unused embryos. The Times reports on a couple stuck in a legal battle over frozen embryos created during IVF.

Amid their divorce, a judge first granted the woman, Erin Millender, custody of the embryos. That ruling was halted after her ex then filed an appeal. But by that point, Erin Millender was already pregnant.

Their case pulls us into new territory in the post-Dobbs era, but there is some precedent. A few examples:

• In 2018, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that a woman couldn’t use frozen embryos she’d made with her ex-husband—but that the woman would have to donate the unused embryos so they wouldn’t be left frozen;

• That same year, Arizona state lawmakers passed a bill requiring that in cases of disputed embryos, the embryos should be awarded to the party that’s most likely to make them “develop to birth”;

• In 2015, a California Superior Court judge ruled in favor of an ex-husband who wanted his shared embryos to be destroyed even though his ex-wife wanted to use them;

• In 2012, a Pennsylvania judge sided with a woman seeking possession of frozen embryos despite her ex’s attempts to block this;

• In 2016, in a nearly identical case, an Illinois judge similarly sided with the woman;

• In 2000, a court in Massachusetts ruled that a man who didn’t want his ex-wife to develop their shared embryos should not be “[compelled] to become a parent against his or her will.”

The Times notes that the future of Millender’s case is now in question, as an appellate judge halted a ruling granting her custody of unused IVF embryos. Of course, she’s already pregnant—should a judge deny her custody of the embryos, it’s unclear what would happen next.

All of this becomes exponentially more confusing—and dangerous—when states pass laws that accord legal personhood to embryos and fetuses. Could someone be penalized for not using their frozen embryos? Or forced to have children with an abuser who sues on behalf of unused frozen embryos? If an embryo is a person—the anti-abortion movement’s ultimate demand—we could soon have to navigate all kinds of new gray areas, for which there’s little to no precedent.

Have You Had a Medication Abortion?

The brilliant folks at We Testify, Shout Your Abortion, Abortion Access Front, and Ultraviolet launched the Mife Stories Project—a medication abortion storytelling campaign to fight back against Republicans’ escalating efforts to ban mifepristone.

“Your lived experience is an essential tool in fighting back anti-abortion LIES being used to restrict our access to these life changing drugs.”

The issue of telemedicine access to mifepristone is currently at the Supreme Court, all while Donald Trump’s FDA is conducting a sham ‘review’ of mifepristone safety. Of course, not only have years of research proven mifepristone is safe, but those of us who have taken it can attest to the same.

To safely share your story with the campaign, visit Mifestories.com.