Nonetheless No Proof That Indiana’s Abortion Ban Damage IU’s OB/GYN Program
Indiana University’s pro-abortion medical professor has yet to produce evidence supporting her claim the state’s pro-life law would hurt the “quality” of OB/GYN candidates – in fact, obtained data show the opposite.
For years, The College Fix has been pressing Dr. Nicole Scott on her claim that making it harder for women to kill their preborn babies would hurt IU’s medical school.
“We are about a week away from entering our recruitment season, which we’ll be reviewing over a thousand applications, interviewing 120 people for next year’s match of 10 OB-GYNs to train here in the state of Indiana,” Dr. Scott said in 2022. “We’re concerned this is going to affect the quality of candidates that we receive and certainly the education we can provide.”
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The comment came after legislators passed a law that effectively outlawed around 95 percent of all abortions in the state.
Data and expert analysis undermine Scott’s claim, however.
The university said it does not have any data on the mean grade point average of OB/GYN resident applicants over the past six years. However, the school did provide data in response to a public records request about the number of applicants.
The data show that first, there were not 120 applicants for the OB/GYN program, as Scott claimed. The highest number recorded is in fact 30 applicants.
In total, applicants for the program are higher than they were in 2021, the last year before Indiana passed its law. In 2021, 16 people applied for the program, followed by 30 in 2022, 18 in 2023, 21 applicants in 2024, and 27 in 2025.
The most recent class of residents, called interns, either came from Indiana University’s medical school, another Indiana university, or came from states that have few, if any, restrictions on abortion.
Specifically, four came from IU, one came from Marian University, which is also in Indiana, and the remaining interns are from Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois – all states which generally allow for abortions through all nine months of pregnancy.
Scott did not respond to multiple emailed requests for comment on any subsequent research she conducted on her claim about the “quality” of candidates. A staffer at the school informed The Fix to either email Scott or to physically mail a letter to her requesting comment.
Scott did co-author a paper in 2025 that found states with pro-life laws had fewer OB/GYN applicants. However, the study also found applications were down across all states. The survey also only received responses from 17 of the more than 300 OB/GYN residency programs.
The media relations team also did not respond to emails and a voicemail in the past several weeks asking for support for Scott’s claim and why half of the intern residents would be from pro-abortion states. The Fix also asked about the discrepancy between applications on the spreadsheet and the numbers cited by Scott.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which supports abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, did not respond to requests for comment.
Experts debunk claim
Several experts said Scott’s claims do not hold up under scrutiny.
The school’s interns “aren’t viewing their careers through a politically oriented filter making abortion a priority over everything else,” Mike Fichter told The Fix via email, when asked why residents were coming from pro-abortion states. He is the president of Indiana Right to Life.
Dr. Scott’s claim ignores “that a very small percentage of OB/GYNs are interested in doing abortions in the first place,” Fichter said.
“Predictions of dramatic drops in OB/GYN residency applications in pro-life states like Indiana are simply not valid,” Fichter said. The argument “was always more of a political statement than anything else.”
“Certainly OB/GYNs should receive the proper training to address extremely rare emergency situations when a pregnant mother’s life and the unborn child’s life is at risk,” Fichter said.
“[U]nfortunately, discussions over training for emergency situations is usually just a cover for the real intent, which is training for all forms of purely elective abortions,” the pro-life leader said.
The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists called Scott’s claim “egregious.”
Dr. Susan Bane, a board-certified OB/GYN who has practiced medicine in North Carolina for nearly 30 years, told The Fix over email that “to claim [medical students] won’t come to Indiana [because of Senate Bill 1] is egregious.” She is the vice chair of the pro-life medical group.
“Medical students don’t go to medical school to end lives, rather to save lives,” Bane said. “The purpose of medicine is health and healing. The direct and intentional killing of one of our patients is not health care and never will be.”
She said around 76 to 93 percent of licensed OB/GYNs do not perform induced abortions. These procedures are different, Dr. Bane said, from a medical intervention that intends to save both patients, even if one dies.
Bane said that more students are being frightened away from the medical profession by the “fear of being forced to perform abortions” than vice versa.
LifeNews Note: College Fix contributor Daisy Roser is a student at Illinois Eastern Community Colleges. This column originally appeared at The College Fix.
