New reproductive health restrictions have not driven OB-GYNs out of states with abortion bans

Since June, 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, 14 states have banned nearly all abortions. The court ruling, Dobbs V Jackson Women’s Health Organization, has also led 6 states to ban abortions after six to 12 weeks’ gestation. In several other states, ongoing litigation or ballot initiatives might also result in new bans.

Rebecca (Becky) Staiger, an assistant professor of health policy and management at UC Berkeley School of Public Health, wondered what impact the bans would have on physicians who specialize in obstetrics and gynecology (OB-GYN) working in those states. Surveys showed growing professional unease around rising legal risks and new constraints to practicing within established standards of care.

“My co–first author, Val Bolotnyy, asked me what would happen after the Dobbs decision,” said Staiger in an interview. “I said, ‘I don’t know the answer to that. But I know how we can find out.’”

Staiger, Bolotnyy and their research team reviewed the administrative records of more than 60,000 OB-GYNs in a federal database, and found that, contrary to anecdotal media reports, it did not appear that doctors were fleeing states where abortions were illegal.

“The number of OB-GYNs did not significantly change across policy environments,” the authors wrote in a paper in JAMA Network Open, published online April 21, 2025. “Although the Dobbs decision has increased physicians’ concerns about providing reproductive health care, there were no observed disproportionate changes in OB-GYN practice location” as of September 2024.

In this descriptive cohort study, the authors note, the number of OB-GYNs actually increased by 8.3% in states where abortion is banned; 10.5% in states where it is threatened, and 7.7% in states where abortion remains protected after the Dobbs decision.

“The only statistically significant difference suggested that the share of physicians who are OB-GYNs decreased less in threatened states than in protected ones, opposite to the expected finding if OB-GYNs were leaving states where abortion is threatened,” they wrote.

Their findings countered media reports describing a mass migration of OB-GYNs out of states that had banned abortion. They noted that concerns prompting OB-GYNs to consider relocation may thus far be offset by other forces, such as ties to patients and local community and the significant effort and disruption associated with relocation.

“Given the media reports, we expected to find some indication of a systemic migration,” Staiger said. “We searched in many different ways. At the end of the day, we let the data do the talking, and we determined that, at least at this point—two years after Dobbs—we weren’t seeing any evidence.”

In future studies, Staiger plans to investigate how the composition of OB-GYNs has changed across states with different policy environments since Dobbs.

She also wants to follow up with a combination quantitative-qualitative study that would shed light on who is leaving states with abortion bans, who stays, and how their own political preferences shape that decision.

“I do not doubt that there are physicians who are leaving these states,” Staiger said. “I just think when we look at it from a 40,000 foot viewpoint, it’s clear that it’s not happening systematically. That’s the critical thing.”