Vi Burgess was in her first year of medical school when Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, ending the constitutional right to abortion in the United States and paving the way for states to severely limit or outright ban access to reproductive healthcare. Burgess, now 25, went to a protest with fellow medical students and then set to work, learning abortion techniques on papayas and joining Medical Students for Choice.
Medical Students for Choice, a nonprofit formed in 1993 by medical students as a response to the lack of abortion education in their training, now has more than 220 chapters at schools across the world. Though the organization is more than 30 years old, many feel it is now more critical than ever as abortion restrictions abound post-Roe — and as their consequences prove deadly. Abortion education was already scarce before Roe was overturned, according to Inside Higher Ed, but has only gotten more difficult as schools in states with abortion bans find themselves unable to provide training. To fill those gaps, Medical Students for Choice provides financial support for students seeking abortion training, hosts conferences to bring providers and students together, and assists students in organizing. Now, with no federal protections for abortion and an administration hostile to reproductive rights, Teen Vogue spoke to several members of Medical Students for Choice to hear why abortion education is critical, and how advocacy fits into their ideas of the doctors they want to be.
Burgess, who was recently a panelist at Abortion in America’s inaugural convening, is a fourth-year medical student in Texas and grew up in the state. When she was in middle school, she remembers the Planned Parenthood down the street from her house shuttered and turned into a crisis pregnancy center. In high school, she says she and other student journalists were stopped from publishing a story in their high school newspaper about using birth control to manage heavy periods. When it came time to choose a focus in medical school, Burgess chose obstetrics-gynecology (OB-GYN) and she sees abortion as simply part of the wide range of care doctors should be prepared to offer. “It’s really empowering to be able to sit down with someone and say, ‘hey, look, here are your options. I’m going to sit here, I’m going to hold your hand, and we’re going to walk through it’,” Burgess says.
As a doctor in Texas, which has some of the strictest laws curtailing reproductive rights access in the country, Burgess is grateful to Medical Students for Choice for their advocacy. The group regularly brings a lawyer in to give a lecture on what the rights of doctors in Texas are. “It’s great because every year he comes with new updated advice,” Burgess says.
For many med students, Roe v. Wade being overturned and the ensuing rash of abortion restrictions has been a factor in where they choose to study. When Olivia French, a 25-year-old third-year medical student, was applying to school, she wondered how the Dobbs decision would change her education. Upset, French went to her dad and said she was going to pull her applications from the schools in states that would have restricted access. “I was expecting to be coddled and I was really looking for some sympathy,” French says. “And he was a little bit frustrated with me and said, ‘if you’re not going to go to these states and be educated, then who will?’”
This has been a growing concern. Med students are avoiding schools in states with abortion bans, but this leaves a lack of trained doctors in those places. French ended up going to medical school in Louisiana — a state with a near complete abortion ban — and joining Medical Students for Choice. She sees advocacy as part of her medical training. “I think that as medical students, we can get caught up in the day-to-day activities… it can feel really monotonous but it can also feel really draining, like you’re forgetting what you’re doing,” she says. Being involved in Medical Students for Choice reminds her of the broader purpose of her studies, and what she sees as one of the integral roles of a doctor. “In medicine, we’re constantly emphasizing this idea of patient autonomy,” French says. “So, yes, any human being has the right to make a decision about their own health and that also includes anyone with a uterus. If you’re not there to support that, why are you in medicine in the first place?”
Haley Beavers Khoury, 30, started medical school just weeks after Roe v. Wade was overturned in the summer of 2022. “That’s the backdrop of my medical education,” Khoury says. She chose to join Medical Students for Choice because the organization not only advocates for reproductive rights, but examines the intersection of racial justice and reproductive justice. As a future OB-GYN, Khoury also sees advocacy as part of the job. “We place emphasis on practicing evidence-based medicine. [Abortion] is medicine that has been studied. It has been proven to be safe, effective, and contributes to good patient outcomes, which is improved mortality, improved quality of life, all the things. From a pro-choice perspective, that is basic obstetric care.” Khoury, who is a medical student in Louisiana, urges students and doctors not to avoid states in which it may be harder to practice because of restrictive laws. “There’s people that really need us,” she says.
It’s something Burgess is thinking about, too, as she applies to residency programs. One of her fellow medical students and friends eased her worries this way: “She looked at me and she said, ‘you grow where you are planted.’ And we were planted in Texas. We were planted at a medical school in the time of Dobbs. And we still helped grow Medical Students for Choice. So even in the worst circumstances, there’s still a way out. There [are] still people that are fighting.”
