this story originally appeared KFF Health News.
There are no clinics offering abortions in the two counties surrounding nurse Samantha Marcy’s clinic in rural northeastern Maryland. And until recently, Marcy herself was not trained to treat patients who wanted to terminate their pregnancies.
“I didn’t know much about abortion care,” she says.
After Roe v. Wade was overturned, Marcy watched state after state ban abortion and enrolled in the first class of a new residency program offered by the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Maryland, Baltimore. I decided.
Marcy learned how to administer medical abortion pills, surgical abortions, and highly effective contraceptive methods such as hormonal implants and intrauterine devices.
She cares for patients with all kinds of routine illnesses and health conditions, including pregnancy. “Some patients come in to confirm their pregnancy and then confide in us that for some reason they don’t want to continue with the pregnancy,” Dr. Murthy said.
Now she can be useful thanks to new training.
Mary Jo Bondi, associate dean for graduate studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, said it is critical to expand the pool of providers with reproductive health care skills outside of the state’s urban centers. Ta. She helped create a new training program.
In 2022, the Maryland General Assembly passed the Abortion Care Access Act, expanding the types of medical care that nurses, physician assistants, and certified nurse midwives can provide, including abortions, and training programs that “prioritize that group.” ” Bondi said.
Bondi said these professionals have been providing abortions to patients in rural areas in other states for years, and “there is evidence that it is safe to receive this treatment from progressive clinicians.”
As many as 120 health workers will be trained over the next two years. Some participants said they would return to communities that are hostile to abortion rights.
Voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to protect reproductive rights in the Maryland Constitution on November 5, according to preliminary results. The state is widely considered a safe haven for patients living in states where abortion is prohibited. number of abortions in maryland 29% increase From 2019 to 2023, it was primarily driven by out-of-state residents. But one of the training participants, a family doctor from the Eastern Shore, said she was asked not to identify herself because she feared for her own safety by providing abortions.
“Rural catchments and politics have really pushed rural areas out, or at least pushed them into quiet places,” she said of abortion access in her area. She said she was worried that her employer would question the prescriptions she wrote for abortion pills, and that pharmacists often refused to give them to patients.
Maryland also allows pharmacists to refuse to dispense abortion pills.
As more health care workers are trained in abortion care, support from state medical schools and health officials is needed to overcome these barriers, the family physician said. She is asking for help with “getting medication and somehow pushing the hands of her employer or normalizing.” “This is just health care.”
Marcy’s next step is to figure out how to let patients know that abortions are available. She plans to tell her current patients and hopes they will tell others too.
“We’re looking at ways to let people know that I’m here and that I can provide that,” Marsey said. “This is a conservative area, so I’m walking that line. I want people to know I’m here, but I don’t want to draw too much anger or attention.”
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