Med students: An abortion ban in North Carolina will mean fewer doctors, period | Opinion

Students applying to medial school have to consider a myriad of factors before choosing where they want to study. Katherine Poulos, a born-and-raised North Carolinian, thought she’d end up in Texas for her medical degree.

When Texas passed a six-week abortion ban in September 2021, Poulos ditched her plans of moving there. She chose to attend med school at her alma mater, UNC-Chapel Hill, where she has spent the last eight months learning how to create a safe environment for patients so that they receive the best care possible. She can’t create that environment if North Carolina passes an abortion ban.

“It feels like a huge burden on the health care system to not be able to provide what we know is the best care for our patients, what the research has shown, and what we’ve been taught,” said Poulos, who was a UNC classmate of mine.

North Carolina Republicans are trying to draft abortion legislation that would affect the entire southeast United States because of the state’s current status as a safe haven for abortion. While the GOP hashes out whether to ban abortion at 6 weeks or after the first trimester of pregnancy, the rest of us are thinking about the years ahead.

North Carolina has two public medical schools: the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine, and the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University. Both are committed to ensuring North Carolina has the best doctors in the country, no matter where you live in the state. ECU only accepts North Carolinians. UNC-Chapel Hill offers scholarships for students who work in a rural part of the state after graduation. Both medical schools are attracting the “best and the brightest” our state has to offer.

If the North Carolina General Assembly makes it harder to practice abortion — a necessary component of health care — it will push future doctors to move away for medical school. Even Poulos is considering it — and she’s not alone.

“I think most of us are going to fight back, because I care about North Carolina, and I care about providing good care to North Carolinians,” Poulos said. “I don’t want to leave, but you know, the general consensus is that a lot of us will, and that’s unfortunate.”

There are people like resident physician Avanthi Jayaweera, who came to North Carolina from Virginia to go through a rigorous training program. She currently sees patients at UNC-CH, although her comments are not affiliated with the university. She says further laws criminalizing abortion will be a huge factor in her decision.

“What these state lawmakers are saying is that they’re going to prevent us from providing the best care to our patients,” Jayaweera told me. “They’re telling us to ignore all the guidelines, ignore the research trials, ignore what has been the gold standard of care and to just to just follow their recommendations blindly. Frankly, that is against against everything that we stand for as physicians.”

Jayaweera notices the chilling effect the current abortion news cycle has on her patients.

“There’s a lot of fear around asking about abortion, [around] talking about reproductive care,” Jayaweera says, “Even miscarriage ends up being a topic where I can sense patients are sometimes scared to bring up conversations about their options.”

Jayaweera says the classroom also has been affected. Her classes are no longer having transparent discussions about reproductive health care. The quality of education is suffering.

“When we’re talking about evidence based care, our job is to talk about the research,” Jayaweera says. “We’re not there to talk about politics. Were there to provide the best care for our patients.”

North Carolina does not have enough doctors as it is. No matter the arbitrary week they decide on, Republicans restricting abortion in the North Carolina General Assembly have not considered the detrimental effect this ban will have on the state’s ability to keep qualified, passionate people in our hospitals and doctor’s offices. All of us will lose if that changes.