The January 2018 edition of Contraception, an international reproductive health journal, includes an article examining the effectiveness of Midwest Access Project’s training model. The article shares findings from a survey of medical students, residents, and practicing clinicians who participated in MAP individual clinical training. In brief, the survey shows that a majority of MAP alum have gone on to provide full scope contraception and pregnancy options counseling, and more than half provide abortion care in their communities. Read the one page overview.

This article shares results of a comprehensive study of all accredited U.S. obstetrics and gynecology residency programs to assess how many of these programs and trainees are currently located in states projected to ban abortion if Roe v Wade is overturned. The study found that of 6,007 current obstetrics and gynecology residents, 2,638 (43.9%) are certain or likely to lack access to in-state abortion training.

This article shares results of a survey of residency program or site directors at all obstetrics and gynecology teaching hospitals about their institution’s abortion policies. The article also details results of in person interviews with a geographically diverse sample of those program directors.  Teaching hospitals in the Midwest were the most likely to limit abortion procedures where medical staff felt that the procedure was not “medically indicated.” A majority of all obstetric and gynecology teaching hospitals “reported that their training hospital had some sort of policy that restricted abortion provision beyond what is allowable under their state’s laws.” These policies present additional barriers to residents seeking such clinical training. Equally as troubling, these policies introduced a “stratification of legitimacy within teaching hospitals… [that] serves to reinforce abortion stigma for both patients and medical trainees.”

This article studied the Reproductive Health Program (RHP) operated from 1999 until 2005 by the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center. RHP was a comprehensive elective abortion training site open to all US medical students, residents, APCs, and physicians in practice. The article is recognized as the first published study evaluating the abortion provision outcomes of primary care clinician abortion trainees, and the first to report on enablers to abortion provision for individual clinicians. Among the findings, the authors stress “the importance of continued support after training is completed.” 

“Catholic hospitals operate under the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, which for obstetrics and gynecology residents may create barriers to receiving adequate training in family planning. This study evaluated how training at a Catholic hospital affects trainees’ subsequent provision of reproductive health services at secular institutions.”  Its conclusion? “Without improved family planning training, residents at Catholic and other restrictive faith-based hospitals will continue to graduate less satisfied with their training, less competent, and less likely to offer such services than graduates of secular hospitals. Ultimately, patients may suffer from inadequate counseling and delays in obtaining needed family planning services.”

This research sought to assess the current status of abortion training in US obstetrics and gynecology residency programs. The article concluded that 64% of residency programs offered routine abortion training, compared to 51% in a 2004 study. The article also concluded that many programs limited the residents’ clinical abortion training to cases presenting pregnancy complications. Among the many barriers residents faced obtaining abortion training, residents report difficulty coordinating their own training rotations.

This survey asked family medicine residency programs around the US about the availability of family planning and abortion training in their respective curricula.  The findings reveal large gaps in the availability of both didactic and clinical training in contraception methods and concluded that less than 10% of the programs offered routine abortion training. The article noted that even all options pregnancy counseling is not universally offered. 

Recent legislation passed in Illinois expanded state Medicaid coverage to include abortion care. Patient-centered pregnancy options counseling includes educating and informing patients that prenatal care and pregnancy termination are now covered services in Illinois. A new manual provides guidance about Medicaid provider enrollment, the new reimbursement rates for abortion services, and related information about state insurance billing.

Many new clinicians believe that they don’t have power to negotiate employment contracts, especially when employers claim that the contract is boilerplate. This is a misconception. New clinicians can and successfully do negotiate their contracts all the time. National Women’s Law Project published an employment contract toolkit to support clinicians as they seek employment and opportunities to provide abortion care.

This all-inclusive interactive curriculum includes tools to train new reproductive health providers to competence.  This most recent version “has improved interactivity with options to use it as a Printable PDF and online with chapter navigation, links to original references, and click-to-enlarge images, as well as extensive new and updated evidence. This workbook is designed to be used for individual review, small-group learning, or in a clinical setting where a trainer can lead a discussion of its content and exercises.”

This comprehensive research examined the barriers to increasing the supply and use of Nurse Practitioners (NP) delivering high-quality sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services. Among their conclusions, nursing education programs are not priortizing reproductive health care in the curriculum. In addition, the report notes, “[t]he lack of clinical training sites for NP students who will practice in SRH (combined with the lack of a standard for SRH competencies) produces an NP workforce that varies widely in SRH exposure, knowledge, and clinical skill.”

“Midwifery as a profession must be unwavering in its foundational support for a person’s bodily autonomy, access to evidence-based care, and a person’s right to choose their care provider. The midwifery model of care, in its intentionality for patient empowerment and holistic application of health care to people and their broader lives, embraces abortion care and provision. It is time for midwives to claim their work in abortion care and for the professional community to support abortion as part of midwifery work.”

“A professional guide for NPs, midwives, and PAs in the United States who are either currently providing or would like to offer abortion care.  The Toolkit helps clinicians compile evidence to support the integration of early abortion care as an essential part of patients’ health care services. It guides NPs, midwives, and PAs in the development of a professional portfolio that documents their education, knowledge, and training and the clinical and professional standards used to provide safe care, including both basic competencies and abortion care. It includes essential information and statistics about abortion care and access, professional standards and competencies, and the roles of state and national professional organizations and state licensing boards.”

The Policy Surveillance project at Temple recently published a comprehensive database of state laws and regulations governing abortion.  From their press release on February 13, 2020: “The landscape of abortion law in the United States saw increases in targeted restrictions in 2019, but also some efforts to protect access by state governments and courts, according to data published today to LawAtlas.org by the Center for Public Health Law Research. The data capture abortion-focused laws passed in 2019 across 15 topic areas.” 

“Cities, counties, and other localities have a unique opportunity to mitigate a hostile climate created by the federal and state governments and to innovate in ways that advance reproductive freedom. Many cities across the country are rising to this occasion, exemplifying municipal resistance to the state and federal assault on reproductive health care.”

Since 1969, CDC has conducted abortion surveillance to document the number and characteristics of women obtaining legal induced abortions in the United States. Their last report was published in 2018.