U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra led a dialogue of the state of girls’s well being care and reproductive rights on the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) January 19 forward of the 51st anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade choice. Becerra was joined by Maryland Governor Wes Moore within the backwards and forwards dialogue with UMB school and college students, in addition to UMB President Bruce E. Jarrell, MD, FACS, and representatives from the Maryland Department of Health, the University of Maryland Medical System, and Planned Parenthood. 

The open-dialogue dialog, initially scheduled as an in-person roundtable on UMB’s campus, was moved on-line because of Friday’s snowstorm. During the digital assembly, individuals spoke about their firsthand expertise navigating reproductive healthcare within the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, through which the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Constitution doesn’t confer a proper to abortion. 

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, Maryland Governor Wes Moore, UMB President Bruce E. Jarrell, University school and college students, and representatives from the Maryland Department of Health, UMMS, and Planned Parenthood talk about girls’s well being care and reproductive rights forward of the Roe v. Wade anniversary.

“We’re launching this tour around the anniversary of Roe because it’s so important to again emphasize what we had and what we need to get back and how we can do better,” Becerra mentioned in opening remarks. 

In welcoming the secretary and governor to the occasion, Jarrell pointed to the University’s distinctive place in getting ready healthcare suppliers for the area. “This is not your usual university. We are a university very focused in health care training, discovery, and delivery in partnership with the University of Maryland Medical System,” he mentioned, including that the college is dwelling to three,500 well being care college students and over 900 postgraduate residents. 

He additionally requested how individuals within the dialog may help efforts to guard reproductive healthcare for ladies in Maryland and throughout the nation. 

Becerra mentioned that testimony from healthcare professionals and medical college students is crucial to educating the general public in regards to the impression Dobbs has had on reproductive healthcare entry in all states. “It is now to the point where a woman has to ask, ‘what is my zip code?’ so she knows what her rights are. That’s a pretty devastating statement about the democracy in this country,” he mentioned. “At the same time, we know that there are people making choices that are detrimental to their health or someone else’s health simply because of what happened in the Dobbs decision.” 

Moore spoke about steps taken by his administration to guard abortion entry within the wake of Dobbs, together with partnering with UMMS to buy a stockpile of mifepristone, one of many drugs prescribed for medical abortions. He vowed to proceed to combat on the state stage to guard these rights and broaden entry to reproductive healthcare. “Maryland will continue to be a safe haven for abortion access as long as I’m the governor,” Moore mentioned. “We owe it to ourselves and to the people of our state, to the people of our country, to ensure that basic reproductive health care is a right and not a privilege.” 

Some of the dialogue’s most compelling testimony got here from UMB school in addition to present medical college students.  

Jessica Ok. Lee, MD, assistant professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences on the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM), and a main care doctor at UMMS, mentioned within the rapid aftermath of the Dobbs choice, “I had patients, Maryland patients, calling me saying ‘is abortion still legal in Maryland?’ Because that’s how confusing legislation is when these court rulings go out. People thought we were closed that day while we were still providing abortion care and reproductive care.” 

She went on to say that the quantity of out-of-state sufferers has elevated for the reason that choice, noting that the upsurge is due partially to BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport’s standing as a Southwest Airlines hub. “People find it cheaper to fly to us than to even drive to other states,” she defined. “So, we are really becoming a safe haven for patients in those other states that cannot seek care.” 

Mary Jo Bondy, DHED, MHS, PA-C, school and program director of the Doctor of Medical Science program on the University of Maryland Graduate School, pointed to the significance of coaching funds allotted in Maryland’s Abortion Care Access Act, which expanded the scope of apply for sure healthcare suppliers and created the Abortion Care Clinical Training Program.  

She mentioned UMB’s dedication to interprofessional schooling and the advantages of team-based care supply and mentioned the method to enhance entry to contraceptive and abortion care is being made “through an abundance lens rather than a scarcity lens.” 

“We have over 4,000 PAs [physician assistants] in the state of Maryland and over 4,000 licensed family nurse practitioners who can come alongside our physician colleagues and really help extend access to care and do it safely and competently,” she outlined. “We’ve designed an opt- in fellowship program that will model team-based care. It’ll be taught by multiple providers, and it will include didactic simulation and clinical training to upskill the current licensed workforce.” 

Jackline Lasola and Haley Hauser, each college students at UMSOM in search of obstetrics and gynecology (OBGYN) placements after their commencement in 2024, spoke about their experiences within the present surroundings as they put together to grow to be residents. 

Lasola famous she has met gifted physicians in coaching across the nation who establish strongly with communities which are restricted within the forms of abortion providers they supply, however added, “They know that to train in that state would mean that they’re severely limiting their actual training.” 

She mentioned that whereas packages in restrictive states are attempting to accomplice with states extra open to abortion care, such approaches shortchange physicians in coaching. “The reality of it is that if you’re not able to practice the skills, and that includes both the actual technical skills as well as the ability to counsel patients accurately in the moment of a clinical encounter, you’re not getting the training that you need in order to provide obstetric and gynecology care in a way that is equitable as well as comprehensive,” Lasola held. 

Hauser emphasised the impact the Dobbs choice had on medical college students within the OBGYN subject. 

“We go into medicine to help people, and throughout our training we’re constantly taught to do what’s best for the patient at all costs,” she defined, and mentioned that abortion restrictions imply that physicians are being instructed from an outdoor supply that they’ll’t act within the affected person’s finest curiosity — one thing that leads medical college students to query how they might react to such circumstances as a future doctor. 

“I think it is impacting people’s decisions to go into OBGYN or not, which is devastating,” Hauser mentioned, although she underlined, “But those of us that have chosen to go into OBGYN are even more excited to join the field and join the fight and continue to fight for our future patients and provide them that access that they deserve.”  

Toward the dialogue’s conclusion, Jarrell famous that UMMS has shifted from a price for service mannequin to a world based mostly budgeting mannequin which rewards value-based care and inhabitants well being. UMMS President and CEO Mohan Suntha, MD, MBA, who additionally took half within the occasion, spoke in regards to the impact value-based medication can have relative to girls’s well being. 

“When you think about women’s reproductive health care rights, when you think about women’s health care overall, and you put it within the context of this evolution that the state of Maryland is driving for the nation — which is really a value-based health care model — it really does drive investment in keeping communities healthy.” 

In addition to representatives from UMB and the state’s medical system, others attending the dialogue included Md. Secretary of Health Laura Herrera Scott, MD, MPH, and Kyle Bukowski, MD, FACOG, chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood of Maryland. 

In Moore’s closing remarks, he applauded all who recounted their experiences. “These are some of the people that make us so proud to be Marylanders and make me incredibly proud to be the state’s governor,” he mentioned. “We know that our ability to be able to protect reproductive rights — it is going to be an all-hands-on deck.” 

Becerra added, “At the end of the day, it is about control — who controls your body and who controls your destiny. Because if you don’t control your body, there’s a very good chance that you don’t get to control your destiny.”