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The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and rescind the constitutional right to abortion will have an impact on where aspiring doctors choose to attend medical school, according to a new survey conducted by Kaplan, an educational company that offers preparation courses for admissions exams, including the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT). (This paragraph has been updated to clarify what Kaplan does.)
The survey, administered to pre-med students who took the MCAT, elicited 328 responses during September and October. Almost half of the respondents said the ruling would likely affect their educational path, with 26 percent saying it probably will and 21 percent saying it definitely will. Another 26 percent said it either definitely or probably wouldn’t, and 27 percent weren’t sure.
The results confirm what many practitioners and professors feared might be a trickle-down effect of the Dobbs decision.
Those who said the ruling would impact their decision cited everything from moral opposition—one respondent wrote they “refuse to apply to any medical school in states where women don’t have rights to their bodies”—to practical concerns about lack of access to hands-on training for abortion procedures.
“It’s clear from our survey results that the Supreme Court’s decision is causing waves among pre-medical students, since this issue intersects both science and, for many, deeply held moral views,” said Jennifer Moore, executive director of premed programs at Kaplan. “Over the next few years, we’ll see how this particular issue impacts actual application and enrollment numbers.”
