One year after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, Sweet Hope Mapatano started her residency in the UNC Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology Residency Program.
Mapatano said many changes resulting from the landmark case’s reversal were starting to happen around the time she was interviewing for residency programs.
“One of the big things that was important to me, even though the laws in North Carolina are a little bit more restrictive than other states, was showing up for the women in North Carolina and not abandoning them, and not having to force them — because there's not a lot of people getting trained in North Carolina — to go to other states in order to receive their care,” Mapatano said. She said her opinions do not represent the residency program.
Residency Program Director for OB-GYN, Jes Morse, said the size of the program hasn't changed in roughly 15 years. However, Morse said she has no doubt that applicants take state abortion restrictions into consideration when making decisions about where to pursue residency.
Mapatano said one of the strengths of UNC is that it has access to a lot of specialists. For example, Mapatano is considering maternal fetal medicine, which UNC receives unique cases of. Whereas, if she did a community program in Virginia, she wouldn't have seen some of those cases.
There are also opportunities for advocacy, she said. A lot of the residents, at least once or twice a year, she said, will go to Washington D.C. and try to talk to legislators about how they can advocate for patients in North Carolina, especially when it comes to reproductive rights.
Morse said residency at a tertiary care center like UNC involves treating the sickest and the most complicated patients.
“Those are the patients that we can legally still care for in North Carolina — it's a sick mom or an unhealthy baby,” Morse said. “I think what [residents] are losing now is more routine second trimester abortion care that is not legal in our state.”
Mapatano said residents are still trained in performing dilation and evacuation procedures. This is when residents use forceps and a vacuum to evacuate all the contents in the uterus, including sometimes fetal parts and placenta after a certain gestational age.