Over the past decade, state legislatures have passed hundreds of medically unjustified restrictions on family planning and abortion care. Pursuit of these government mandates continues to intensify, including an alarming trend of proposals seeking to criminalize physicians. Such policies—including telemedicine bans, medication abortion restrictions, Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws, waiting periods, stipulations for multiple visits, and mandated scripts for counseling—stand in contrast to the clinical evidence on abortion, interfere with the physician-patient relationship and reproductive autonomy, create unnecessary and dangerous barriers to accessing care, and obstruct evidence-based medical training and practice. In the face of legislative interference with medical practice, obstetrician-gynecologist (OB/GYN) physicians and professional societies play a critical role in ensuring implementation of evidence-based family planning policies and challenging dangerous bills and state laws. At the individual level such advocacy takes many forms, including legislative testimony, service as a plaintiff or expert witness in a legal challenge, expertise to policy makers, media engagement, and institutional advocacy to expand training and service provision. At the organizational level, professional societies inform family planning policy by issuing position statements supporting family planning and abortion care, participating in amicus briefs in lawsuits, and supporting the advocacy and policy engagement of their members.
Educating and engaging the next generation of physician advocates and ensuring that OB/GYN residents understand the implications of family planning policies on their training, future practice, and patients’ lives, is an important aspect of OB/GYN resident education. This flipped classroom course will engage and equip OB/GYN residents with effective strategies for countering medically unfounded government mandates and advancing policies that improve access to comprehensive family planning and abortion care in a high-stakes and increasingly polarized environment. Its focus is educating and empowering OB/GYN resident learners to be effective family planning advocates, but it is relevant to physicians at all levels of practice.