This story aired in the June 9, 2025 episode of Crosscurrents.
The Trump administration is pushing for a “baby boom.” They are working to promote conservative family values convince women to have more babies and.
While the fall of Roe V. Wade reawakened the abortion debate, access to abortion in this country has actually been declining for decades. In this story we go to one of the remaining training programs to learn how providers are safeguarding reproductive healthcare.
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Story Transcript:
REPORTER: A med school student in this country can expect their education to cover many obvious procedures. There is one they can’t necessarily bet on learning how to do.
DEHLENDORF: So, um, what we can do, I'm gonna just show you the equipment, first of all, just to give you a sense of what, what we use.
REPORTER: Abortions.
DEHLENDORF: So I've already started by showing you what the uterine aspirator looks like. These are the old ones, so don't be confused.
REPORTER: Here’s the thing: there is no universal mandate that demands abortion be included in every med school curriculum. That’s what makes today’s workshop for UCSF residents so vital.
Family Community Medicine Professor Christine Dehlendorf is teaching a group of residents how to perform abortions… on papayas. First she pulls an unusually gigantic one out of a grocery store bag.
REPORTER: It turns out papayas work well as inexpensive uterine models.
DEHLENDORF: So I took another trip to Safeway today. I have the receipts in my bag. So we have the normal size ones too. Um, but, so I'll use this for an example. So the reason -- why do we use Papayas for this workshop? Does anyone know?
REPORTER: The room is bright and feels like a classroom. About a dozen residents sit around a big table and pair up for the workshop.
They’re learning how to give uterine aspirations, a procedure to remove pregnancy tissue from the uterus in early pregnancy cases and miscarriages.
POLLOCK: Um, so it's basically using a fruit like a papaya is what it's named after, but we also use dragon fruit 'cause it works really well to basically simulate the pregnant uterus.
REPORTER: The workshop’s lead instructor Lealah Pollock shows residents how to insert a uterine aspirator into the fruit.
It's a handheld pump that looks like a large syringe. She’s turning it - and demonstrating how suction will extract seeds from the papaya, which represent pregnancy tissue.
POLLOCK: This work is incredibly important because as we have more and more restrictions to abortion access across the country that also impacts our ability to train the next generation of abortion providers…
REPORTER: Abortion training is dwindling. Fewer and fewer people are being trained to safely end pregnancies. And those who know how to do it…are aging out.
POLLOCK: So we really need doctors from all sorts of specialties who have these skills to be able to empty a uterus in an emergency or in a clinic with somebody coming in for miscarriage or abortion. So that people who are pregnant can get the care they need wherever they are.
REPORTER: The Papaya Workshop exists thanks to the Reproductive Health Service Corps, a California organization working to increase opportunities for abortion training. Certified nurse midwife Bethany Golden is their co-director.
When Bethany attended Yale Nursing School in the early 2000’s, the missing part of her education surprised her.
GOLDEN: I assumed because we were learning everything about people and pregnancy and menopause and all the topics that affect folks throughout their entire lives that I would do abortion in that space. And so when I went to the head of the program I said to them, when would we do abortion? Um, they said, you won't be.
REPORTER: Bethany considered the procedure to be a natural part of her role in healthcare.
GOLDEN: The reason I got interested in being a midwife was because of my belief in bodily autonomy. Some people I think associate midwifery with birth and pregnancy. Um, my interest was really being with patients from age 12 to a hundred.
REPORTER: According to Bethany, abortion used to be more integrated in primary care. As it became more politicized, it was outsourced away to specialty clinics or places like Planned Parenthood…. And those have been disappearing, too. So, not only is the training decreasing – so are the places to get abortions.
GOLDEN: The Bay Area is known for technology innovation, and it's known for advancement. Um, but the Bay Area is also known, and I don't think a lot of people know this, for innovation in abortion training.
REPORTER: The corps also offers trainings to midwives, nurses, doulas, paramedics, pharmacists, and community health workers. They partner with clinics in areas with higher stakes, like near the borders of states with bans, to train providers there …And even in California, a safe abortion can be difficult to find…
GOLDEN: I think that it's, you know, really important to remember how rural California is. We are working really hard on the Eastern side of the Sierra Mountains to create access points and have identified leaders in that area who are interested in integrating services.
REPORTER: Another focus of the corps and workshops like the papaya one… is the more social aspects of abortion and childbirth.. Like raising awareness about the significantly high maternal mortality rate for Black women in the U.S. And, how much language choice can matter during a stressful procedure.
DEHLENDORF: Footrest. The table, not the bed. You know, like those, that language is really important.
REPORTER: Christine and Lealah tell the residents that much of abortion care is before anything physical even starts. It starts as soon as they walk into the room and sit on an exam table.
POLLOCK: Yeah. And things like, you know, never push people's knees apart. Um, there are some verbal cues that you can give people to help them make adjustments that, um, help their knees relax out, have their hips kind of relax down, but never forcing anyone.
REPORTER: So many things go into making sure someone feels comfortable…
POLLOCK: I'm gonna check on her and see how she's feeling.
And then I'll start with the 15. And so I'm gonna put it in the external oss. And then because she's anteverted, I'm gonna drop my hand and feel it slide in and feel the kind of give as it goes through the internal os.
REPORTER: She’s holding the papaya up in the air with one hand as she switches out tools to show how much pressure to use.
POLLOCK: And then I'll do a 17, 19.
I'm just kind of doing a show. I'm doing a show.
REPORTER: When President Trump took office this year, the federal government’s reproductive health website went dark. The new administration froze funding for hundreds of clinics across the country.
Bethany reflects that she may be the only generation that had protected abortion access for their entire reproductive life.
GOLDEN: I was born in 1973, which is the year Roe passed. And, you know, and as Dobbs decision came down, I was going through menopause. And so, I mean, the idea that my life had these legal guardrails. And again, Roe was never perfect and nor did it provide access to many people who needed it. But that, that maybe I'm the only generation that got that.
REPORTER: All the more reason, she says, to stick to their mission of continuing to pass this knowledge down… knowledge that has just become that much more critical.
