Colorado medical students pursue training
Christine Hassell calls her decision to offer abortion services once she starts practicing medicine an “if not me, who?” moment.
It came after she attended a Medical Students for Choice conference in December.
“There’s a gap that needs to be filled and if I don’t fill it, then, you know, women are going to fall through the cracks,” said Hassell, a medical student at Rocky Vista University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine in Parker and president of the college’s Medical Students for Choice chapter.
But in the months since she attended that conference, 19 states have enacted new restrictions on abortion, including a variety of different types of bans, such as Alabama’s law that would make terminating a pregnancy at any stage a felony for the health provider.
With the recent flurry of activity in state legislatures and concerns about the future of Roe vs. Wade, there’s a sense that a shake-up is on the way for one of the nation’s most contentious issues — and medical students in Colorado are taking note. Most notably, future health providers say they’re worried they could soon enter a
field in which it will be difficult to practice medicine in certain states if they want to include abortion among the services they offer.
“More than likely there will be states where this service will still happen in the United States,” Hassell said. “It just might become more difficult for new doctors to learn that or might become more difficult for new doctors to get practice providing the services.”
It’s not just state lawmakers that have taken up the issue of abortion; there have been proposed changes on the federal level — such as the so-called “gag rule” — that have sparked lawsuits by state attorneys general, including Colorado’s. And abortion advocates worry that the increasingly conservative U.S. Supreme Court could overturn, or at least chisel away at, the 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling that legalized the procedure nationwide.
Karen Middleton, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado, has said this state is considered “safer ground than most.” Colorado neither restricts access to abortion nor guarantees access to it.
“I never questioned that abortion was legal and available until I came to Colorado for medical school and kind of my eyes were opened,” said Jen Daniels, a medical student at the College of Osteopathic Medicine and former vice president of the local Medical Students for Choice chapter.
“I find it truly bewildering how so much of our political atmosphere is driven by one medical procedure that is extraordinarily common, extremely safe and really positively impacts women’s lives,” she said.
Medical students are aware of the abortion debates taking place across the nation, even if it’s not exactly being discussed within their schools, said Joseph Fuchs, a student at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and a member of Students for Life, an anti-abortion nonprofit based in Virginia.
“It probably does not affect medical school education very much,” added CU medical student Kaitlin Vanderkolk, noting that abortion training typically happens later during residency programs. She is also with Students for Life.
While many laws and policies have been considered by states, for Fuchs and Vanderkolk, the one that is most notable is the proposed federal rule to allow physicians to object to providing services, including abortions, based on their moral or religious beliefs.
“It’s essential that people of faith have fundamental protections to live out their faith while practicing medicine,” Fuchs said.
But for medical students such as Aly Sotiros, the stringent abortion laws passed by some states are already playing a role in where they might go for training — or, eventually, to practice medicine.
“We traveled to Alabama for vacation a few months ago, and as much as we loved the beach, we said we can’t ever move here because I would be put in jail,” said Sotiros, a student at the CU School of Medicine.
As access to abortion becomes more restricted, some medical students said, it could also become more dangerous to offer those services.
In 2015, a gunman killed three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. And Dr. Warren Hern, a well-known abortion specialist in Boulder, used to wear a bulletproof vest because of the threats to his clinic, according to Boulder’s Daily Camera.
“The more this rhetoric is thrown around without … protecting what really is at stake here, the more that you’re going to encourage people who are not in their right minds to do terrible things like Colorado Springs,” said Audrey Jaeger, a student at the College of Osteopathic Medicine. “It’s a scary reality.”
Still, students said the new laws and potential threats won’t sway them from their decision to pursue training as abortion providers.
“I chose this profession; it’s not up to me and how I personally feel,” Hassell said.
“It’s a medical procedure that needs to be done, so I’m going to continue to do it.”