California group works to increase abortion education

Organization helped create Reproductive Health Services Corps

Education in abortion methods is something that has long troubled abortion providers. The inability to find people who know how to perform one makes it challenging to meet patient demands. 

State university medical schools have faced hurdles in getting taxpayer funding if they provide lessons to prospective doctors about how to perform a procedural abortion. There have also been efforts by the antiabortion movement to discourage medical schools from offering that training. So when physicians leave medical school, they often don’t leave with an understanding of how to perform a relatively simple operation. 

Flor Hunt, executive director of a reproductive education organization called TEACH (Training in Early Abortion for Comprehensive Healthcare), said the result is that OB/GYNs are the only ones guaranteed abortion training in residency but they tend to be located in metro areas instead of rural ones. 

“As a result, you don't have the kind of abortion provider workforce that you would necessarily need,” Hunt said. “And so abortion care tends to be concentrated in these kinds of family planning clinics, which are like in big cities.” 

Hunt and other activists are trying to change the climate around reproductive education. They have sought to get laws that permit nurses and certified midwives to provide abortions. In states where abortion remains legal, providers and their allies have sought to get state funding to increase the abortion workforce. 

California is one of the major destinations for abortion education. As part of her work with the California Future of Abortion Council, which pushed 16 bills through the state legislature. In 2022, she helped push for a bill to create more opportunities for abortion education by raising funding for training programs. 

They used to focus on training residents to go back to places where abortion care was inaccessible. Now they hope to keep the workforce in California and other abortion sanctuary states. 

“Now that's not really possible because if they go back to their state and provide medical care, they can't actually be an abortion provider,” Hunt said. “And so the alternatives now are you stay in a safe state like California or New York and you provide care here to patients who are traveling here or through telehealth.” 

Hunt and her staff helped push AB1918 through the California legislature. It was designed to increase abortion access in parts of the state where it was unavailable. It also established the Reproductive Health Services Corps, which helps recruit, train, and retain a diverse workforce of reproductive health care professionals who will be part of reproductive health care teams to work in underserved areas.

“It's only been a year since Dobbs ruling came out and since Roe was overturned,” Hunt said.
“And I think we're really barely starting to understand what the real consequences banning comprehensive reproductive health care will be.”