“If local prosecutors, guided by their political expediency, are planning to imprison board certified obstetricians like me, then who do they expect to safely deliver all these pregnancies?” asked Dr. Audrey Stryker, a Bay City obstetrician and gynecologist.
Stryker met with several other medical professionals as part of a Committee to Protect Health Care’s virtual panel to discuss gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon’s abortion ban policy, which they say will drive medical professionals out of the state and lead to additional staffing shortages.
Dixon’s senior advisor, Kyle Olson, criticized the Committee, calling the group’s founder, Dr. Rob Davidson, a “political hack who failed at running for Congress.”
“He’s trying to remain relevant,” Olsen said, adding that the Committee is on the side of the “radicals” who want to eliminate protections like parental notification that he says are widely supported by Michiganders.
Stryker, who has practiced since 1988, said a medical staffing shortage existed even before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.
“Every day I receive multiple emails, texts and phone calls from hospitals in urgent need of obstetricians to cover their labor and delivery units, necessitating the closure of smaller labor and delivery units all over the state,” Stryker said. “Even prior to the overturning of Roe, in the state of Michigan, we were in dire need of obstetricians.”
Dr. Amanda Sandles, a chief resident in internal medicine, agreed that staffing shortages have persisted well into 2022. She said Michigan has fewer nurses per capita than other neighboring states, at 13.77 per 1,000 people. Ohio has 19.1 per 1,000, Wisconsin has 19.3 and Indiana 17.9, according to a Becker’s Hospital Review analysis from Feb. 18, 2022.
And one in 10 nursing positions in Michigan is vacant at the moment, she said.
Sandles said that a complete, no-exemptions ban on abortion would force doctors to choose between compromising patient care and being legally prosecuted.
“Our patients rely on all of us,” Sandles said. “And all we do when we get to this role is to try to ensure the best outcomes for them. That includes access to safe abortion care.
“Taking providers out of a system that is already suffering from a lack of total providers would just be a travesty,” she added.
OB/GYN Natalie Gladstein, along with two colleagues, criticized Dixon’s no-exceptions abortion stance and lack of experience in the medical field.
“We’re also extremely concerned and outraged that a politician with no medical knowledge or expertise like Tudor Dixon threatens to jail doctors and nurses for practicing medicine and providing medically necessary care,” she said.
Gladstein said doctors should be able to use the full range of treatment options when medical complications come up in pregnancy.
This story courtesy of MIRS, a Lansing-based news and information service.