‘A skill you need to save a life’: the US doctors traveling to Mexico for abortion training | Trump administration

S.Paper, it should not be difficult for Dr. Sebastian Ramos to learn to perform miscarriages. As a family medicine doctor, Ramos works in a specialty that provides the procedure frequently. He lives in deep blue California, where it is still permitted. Officials who run the Ramess-Ramer-a kind of vocational training that doctors should have to become complete doctors-Ramos’s desire to learn how to do this.

But over his three -year stay, Ramos guarantees training for only three days in family planning. The residents get participating in a handful of miscarriage only.

“This is not enough if you want to care for abortion,” said Ramos, who asked to go to a brief copy of his last name to protect his privacy. “I knew that if you wanted to do this, you need more experience.”

For this reason, earlier this month, Ramos traveled to a two -week -long clinic in Mexico City in providing miscarriage. During his first week in the clinic, run by the World Reproductive Options Organization MSI and Arm Fundación Msi, Ramos has aborted nearly 60 miscarriages.

In the years that have passed on the United States Supreme Court ROE V WadeThe road paves the way for more than ten countries to prohibit almost all miscarriages. A small but increasing number of potential abortion providers began to leave the country in search of education. In 2023, MSI trained nine American doctors to perform miscarriages in clinics in Mexico. In 2024, he trained 27. So far this year, it is on the right path to double this number.

“On the one hand, it is comfortable to know that medical students and residents will not have to abandon this very important part of their training in their education,” said Pamela Merit, Executive Director of Medical Students. Last year, Merit helped eight students in medicine and residents to obtain abortion training in Mexico and UK.

Merritt continued: “It is also sad that in the United States, we fail to train people even at the level of care indicated by the abortion ban.”

Every abortion in the United States allows miscarriage to save the patient’s life. But without sufficient training, doctors may not be skilled enough to perform abortion even in these terrible people conditions.

‘it’s a shame’

Faculties of medicine and residence programs are managed by huge hospitals that rely heavily on general financing; These institutions tend, by nature, to anything controversial like miscarriage. The Accreditation Council for Medical Education for Graduate Studies (ACGME) requires the establishment of OB-GYN to teach doctors how to perform abortions since the 1990s, but instead of providing training in the company, hospitals often planted their residents to independent abortion clinics for training.

Even before the fall of ROE, this system was defective: a I found a 2019 study Despite the ACGME requirements, only 64 % of OB-GYN residence software provided “routine training with custom time” for miscarriage. Residents of family medicine who want to learn to perform abortion operations face a greater defect, because Acgme does not require their residence programs to provide any kind of abortion training.

Even most of OB-Gyn residents, who were informed by the program managers in the 2019 study, did not achieve what doctors call “efficiency” when it comes to abortion. Without efficiency – a qualification that is measured through a set of knowledge, skills and attitudes for doctors – doctors may not be able to perform abortion operations safely on their own.

Mysteries and efficiency training It is difficult now to get it. Since Roe collapsed, more than 100 miscarriage clinics have been closed. Patients who flee abortion are often surrounded, leaving them without time and space to teach everyone who wants to learn.

If the OB-GYN residence program is in a state of abortion prohibits, the ACGME rules are currently dictating that residence “must provide access to this clinical experience in a different judicial state where it is legal.” ACGME refused to respond to a request for information about the number of residence programs currently compatible with the requirements of abortion training, although records show that there are no OB-Gyn programs that have lost their approved status last year.

Patricia Lohr, Director of Research and Innovation for Consultative Service for the British pregnancy (BPAS), is a non -profit institution in the UK that provides abortion even about 24 weeks of pregnancy. Lohr train to become OB-GYN in the United States. “After I was a resident and student of medicine in the United States, I could see the importance of accessing abortion, which was not fully dependent on what was delivered within academic training programs,” Luhar said. “Because often, miscarriages have not been presented in those academic hospitals.”

When Lohr moved to the United Kingdom, she quickly moved to create a two -week training program in BPAS where medicine students can learn about miscarriage and control – But do not lead – The procedure. In the years on ROE, this training program received an increase in requests from American and resident students.

“It is a shameful matter that people should travel to learn an essential part of women’s health care,” Luhar said. “There are many trainees at the present time who want to get miscarriage skills, but they cannot get them locally, and therefore they are converted to doing something else.”

Lauren Winner, a medical student in New Jersey, had originally planned to travel to Arizona in the summer of 2022 to learn how to provide miscarriage. But when she led Row, abortion providers in Arizona to temporarily stop working, Wiener had to cancel her journey. Instead, it ended with a week -long training in BPAS last fall.

“It is something that you need to know how to do, because there are emergency situations,” Winner said of abortion. “You may not want to optionally miscarriage in 24 weeks, but if someone comes as they embody, you need to know how to evacuate that uterus. It is a skill that needs to save life.”

“We will be there”

While training in the United States is dwindling, the country’s increasing approach to abortion has developed it at odds with a large part of the rest of the world. Only four countries, including the United States, have tightened the laws of abortion over the past thirty years, while more than 60 countries and regions have eased, according to the Reproductive Rights Center.

Mexico is one of them. In 2023, its Supreme Court Abortion is experimental throughout the country; The procedure is now available in about half of all Mexican states. Service providers are not the only people who benefit from the laws of abortion liberated in Mexico: Last year, Fundación Msi provided abortion in the first decade to 62 women from the United States.

“Training, training and training-you are supposed to have a lower risk for actual patients,” said Arselli Lopez Nava, Managing Director of MSI Latin America. “We understand how difficult the situation is in the United States, so we are happy to help.”

The organization has estimated the ability to train up to 300 doctors annually to perform miscarriages, according to Lopez Nava estimates.

Msi is not, however, a solution for everyone. Possible trainees need to speak Spanish. Although in the past years the organization trained medical students, Mexico clinics in MSI began to focus on the education of the population who have already performed 20 miscarriages. Since the population has already chosen their specializations and sidewalks in residence programs – which can be very competitive – it is more likely to become miscarriages.

Training in Mexico can also be bilateral, especially since the program does not pay for travel and housing. The entire Ramos trip costs about $ 5,000, although the grant helped him cover most of the costs.

Ramos said: “It is a method, at least for me, to be exposed to a different medical system, learn from various service providers from a different country, exchanging knowledge,” Ramos said. “I feel adequately ready to meet the needs of my patients in the United States.”