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This story was originally published by Rewire News Group, a national, nonprofit media organization exclusively dedicated to reporting on reproductive and sexual health, rights, and justice.

Reproductive health clinics have been closing at alarming rates since the Supreme Court ended federal abortion protections in 2022. Facing mounting social and economic pressures, at least 100 clinics closed between the fall of Roe v. Wade and June 2025, the latest data available.

Every time a clinic closes, patients lose access to care, but that’s not all: Whole communities lose their comprehensive care providers for future generations.

As a nurse, doula, and the executive director of the reproductive health clinical training and advocacy group Repro TLC, I’ve seen firsthand how abortion restrictions and clinic closures are shrinking the pipeline of trained providers. This is happening even in the states where access to abortion care remains fairly robust.

The result is a workforce crisis in the medical field that extends far beyond abortion access and threatens the future of reproductive health in communities nationwide.

Clinics Are Training Grounds

Community-based reproductive health centers — clinics that operate independently of hospitals, major medical centers, or Planned Parenthood affiliates — serve as a safety net for patients. They provide 58 percent of abortion care nationwide.

Organizers in Idaho, Nevada, and Virginia Are Putting Abortion Rights on Ballot

They also provide crucial training infrastructure for future health care providers.

Most medical and nursing education programs do not teach abortion care; providers who want to provide abortions to patients often have to find, coordinate, and fund their own training opportunities at independent clinics — like a self-organized medical rotation. And as more of these independent clinics close, these training opportunities dwindle.

In some ways, this is putting providers in a parallel situation to that faced by patients who want or need to terminate a pregnancy.

Many people face near-impossible challenges to accessing abortion care: They must navigate rising costs, take time off work, and drive or fly hundreds of miles to receive a medical procedure. The average cost of an abortion in the U.S. is $650 today. And abortion funds are reporting their abortion funding costs increased 30 percent since 2024.

For residents of ban states like Louisiana, the additional costs of travel, lodging, and meals have risen 13 percent in the same period, bringing that cost to more than $1,100. That is an unjust burden, and poor and BIPOC communities........

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