A Texas doctor told Joe Biden that medical students were being forced to practice abortions on papayas as an “unintended consequence” of the overturning of Roe v Wade.
Dr Danielle Mathisen, a doctor who studied obstetrics and gynaecology (OB-GYN) at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas, explained to President Biden how doctors are often unable to get clinical practice to conduct abortions in states where abortion is now banned or expected to be.
In the NowThis News presidential forum on Monday, Mr Biden appeared shocked. “I didn’t realize that was the case,” he said, when he was told that several Texas schools were not being able to teach proper abortion care to medical students “out of fear that that’s somehow aiding and abetting achieving an abortion”.
“I’m going to check it out in most states. And because it’s very worrisome, that’s an example of what the Dobbs decision is doing,” he said.
Dr Mathisen said that due to Texas’s “negative stance” on abortion, “my colleagues and I needed to create an off-campus after-hours club that allowed us to study the curriculum that wasn’t offered to us”.
Mr Biden said he admired their willingness to get together to teach themselves, but asked: “I’m curious, how do you do that?”
“A papaya is a very good representation of a uterus, and you can practice on the papaya fruit,” she said.
“Gotcha. God love ya,” Mr Biden responded.
More than a dozen US states effectively banned abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in June.
OB-GYN in residency programmes are required to train students for abortions, according to the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. With states banning abortions, programmes have had to provide the required training somewhere else.
This has led to many students using the unusual workaround to study.
This article was amended on November 1 2022 to remove an inaccurate reference to abortion being illegal in New Jersey.
