SALT LAKE CITY — As some women have problems finding an OB-GYN in Utah, it appears doctors are avoiding the state, and others like it, due to policies related to women's healthcare, specifically abortion restrictions.
Fewer available doctors have left some women on a seemingly never-ending search for an OB-GYN.
“I started looking in August, just a little behind on things, and realized it was going to be a lot harder to make an appointment than I had previously thought," explained Ally Heath.
When Heath moved to Utah from Colorado, she says she couldn’t get an appointment with a gynecologist anywhere.
“I originally looked at U of U Sugar House just because it was so much closer and they did not have availability until January,” she said.
Heath is not alone.
Many other Utahns have been facing long wait times for gynecologists and other types of health care providers in recent years. Those delays are for a number of reasons, like staffing shortages and playing catch-up from COVID-19, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
Now, according to a recent survey, a new factor may be playing a role in the number of OB-GYN's coming to the state after completing their medical studies.
“It was a large amount of new OB-GYN's who are deciding not to start their careers in a restricted state,” explained Dr. Alex Woodcock, a complex family planning fellow at the University of Utah School of Medicine.
Woodcock spearheaded a survey this spring that looked into whether the Dobbs v. Jackson decision is impacting OB-GYN residents when it comes to choosing a state where they'd like to work. Of the more than 300 residents who responded, nearly 1-in-5 said they changed their intended destination following the Dobbs decision, which overruled Roe v. Wade last year.
The study also showed that those residents who initially planned to practice in states that restricted abortion were eight times as likely to have decided to work somewhere else.
“It is a large amount of people that are deciding not to live and work in restricted states and in the end, this is going to dramatically impact patient outcomes," said Woodcock.
In Utah, abortion is legal up to 18 weeks, but a near-total ban is up for debate at the state's highest court. Woodcock says she worries with the survey findings, Utah will struggle to recruit new OB-GYN doctors.
“...when you're starting your new career and graduating from residency, you have all of the decisions in the world available to you," Woodcock explained, "and these people feel that these abortion restrictions are a big factor when they're making these decisions.
"And I predict that I just uncovered kind of the tip of the iceberg.”
