Republicans look to Social Security Act to restrict abortion training

Anti-abortion bill targets Graduate Medical Education funding to prevent medical residents from learning how to perform abortions

Dec 01, 2025

“Abortion, or evacuating the uterus, is a core procedure for OB-GYN. It’s also used for management of miscarriages and complications of pregnancy like infection and bleeding.”1 That's why “it’s a technique that has to be learned,” explains Dr. John Combes of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).2 “Since 1996, the accreditation body has required residency programs in obstetrics and gynecology to offer abortion training, with an option for residents to opt out if they had moral or religious objections.”3

But, decades later, the faux-lifers have suddenly decided that the opt-out option isn't good enough for them.

Instead, they want to stop all abortion training nationwide.

As regular readers already know, rePro-Truth has been covering attacks on OB-GYN residency programs’ abortion training. These accelerating attacks are in line with the goals set forth by dozens of reactionary groups in Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership,” and the “Woe is me!” victimhood narrative being employed to advance these attacks is all too familiar.

As a first step in their incrementalist strategy, anti-abortion groups are aiming to restrict medical residents’ access to abortion training nationwide by forcing residency programs to switch from an opt-out training model to a cumbersome, lower quality, opt-in training model —without consideration or appreciation of the downstream effects upon patients nationwide that would result from ideologically engineering a far less proficient OB-GYN workforce.

And because honesty and transparency are two things with which antis haven't even the faintest familiarity, they've concocted a ‘cover story’ to justify their attempt to restrict residents’ access to abortion training.

And that cover story is almost too stupid and convoluted to say out loud.

What is their cover story? —That not forcing forced-birther medical residents to learn how to do abortions is, somehow, still forcing them to do so. Because, hypothetically, they might feel “pressure” to do it. And these grown-ass-adults just really, really want to fit in with the cool people at the lunch table.

Remember, these are people who insist that abortion is literally “murder.”

You sure as hell couldn't peer-pressure me into committing murder.

Anti-abortion groups must surely think that their ideological compatriots in the medical field are total psychos who are easily pressured into murdering people. If that's the case, we definitely shouldn't be trusting these folks to be doctors.

Or maybe the antis don't actually think abortion is murder after all. 🤔

But I digress….

On November 11, 2025, Republicans in Congress announced that they had introduced a new bill that they are calling the “Conscience Protections for Medical Residents Act (CPMRA). Naturally, the bill wouldn't actually do what its title implies: the bill provides exactly zero protection for residents who conscientiously object to forced-birtherism and actually want to become the most well-trained and proficient practitioners they can.

But, oh well.

Honesty and transparency are two things with which antis haven't even the faintest familiarity.

The bill would amend the Social Security Act to restrict medical residents’ access to abortion training by making Graduate Medical Education funding available only to residency programs with opt-in abortion training. The bill also prohibits discrimination against forced-birth medical residents who don't want to learn abortion care —which is already illegal— even though it's a super important skill in obstetrics care.

One bill sponsor, Senator James Lankford, said that medical residents shouldn't be pressured into committing murder -- again indicating that anti-abortion groups and policymakers think that their ideological compatriots in the medical field are total psychos who are easily pressured into murdering people.

Another Republican sponsor of this bill to ideologically engineer a less proficient OB-GYN workforce, Congressman Greg Murphy, said, “This issue is about restoring a non-ideological educational environment where individuals do not fear expressing moral or religious objections.”

Really, Gregory?

Honesty and transparency are two things with which antis haven’t even the faintest familiarity.

At this point, I'm thinking that we should all be seriously concerned about the number of forced-birth, peer-pressure-made-me-do-it murderers becoming doctors. We should probably address that problem instead of creating laws that coddle maniacs susceptible to murdering people when faced with a little social pressure.

After all, the antis are concerned enough about these ticking, Ted Bundy time bombs to introduce a bill to ease the pressure on them. If that's the case, we definitely shouldn't be trusting these folks to be doctors.

Or maybe the antis don’t actually think abortion is murder after all.

Maybe it's all just about control. ■

rePro-Truth

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