Since Roe fell, abortion advocates have hunted for new ways to keep training abortionists.
One of them just found a home inside a public university's family medicine department.
Michigan is now paying family doctors, instead of OB-GYNs, to learn how to end pregnancies.
Inside The Reproductive Health Access Project Abortion Training Fellowship
The University of Michigan Medical School's family medicine department is running a year-long fellowship built around one specific skill.
It's called the Reproductive Health Care & Advocacy Fellowship, run in partnership with the Reproductive Health Access Project.
The university's own website says the goal is to "develop leaders who will promote and teach full-spectrum women's reproductive health care within primary care, specifically to underserved populations."
Strip away the euphemism, and the fellowship trains family physicians, not OB-GYNs, to perform abortions and then teach other doctors to do the same.
Fellows spend part of the year working at what the program itself calls a "high-volume abortion site."
"High-volume" isn't a vague marketing term in this industry.
In 2021, one Texas clinic raced to perform 67 abortions in 17 hours the night before that state's heartbeat law took effect, a real, documented count from a single facility in a single shift.
The program doesn't say which specific site its fellows train at, but that's the scale the label "high-volume" is describing industry-wide.
The Reproductive Health Access Project runs this same fellowship at four locations: Michigan, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York.
Across all four sites combined, the program trains eight fellows a year.
The program doesn't stop at teaching one doctor to perform abortions.
Fellows are trained as what the program calls a "trainer-in-training," meaning each one is expected to go on and teach the procedure to residents and other physicians after their year is up.
One fellowship, run once, is designed to multiply.
The Money Behind The University Of Michigan Abortion Training Fellowship
This isn't volunteer work.
According to Campus Reform, fellows can earn between $77,049 and $105,447, plus health insurance, a meal allowance, and 28 vacation days.
Campus Reform also reviewed the university's federal tax filings and found the Reproductive Health Access Project sent the University of Michigan $69,652 between 2020 and 2023.
The group funneled similar money to Rutgers University and the University of Washington for the same kind of training.
A public university's family medicine department, funded in part by an outside abortion-advocacy nonprofit, training doctors who aren't OB-GYNs to perform abortions on "underserved populations."
That's not a hidden side project.
That's the fellowship's entire stated mission.
A Pro-Life OB-GYN's Response To Family Medicine Abortion Training
Dr. Christina Francis is an OB-GYN and the CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
She didn't hold back.
"The euphemistically named 'Reproductive Health Care' fellowship at the University of Michigan only provides training in one thing a normal family medicine residency wouldn't: performing induced abortions which intentionally end the lives of our fetal patients," Francis said.
"It is deeply concerning that a public university such as The U of M has chosen to blur the lines between abortion and actual care for pregnant women," she said.
Francis pointed to the Hippocratic Oath, which she said "forbids intentionally ending the lives of our patients, including by induced abortion."
An actual OB-GYN is saying the quiet part out loud: this fellowship exists to do one thing a real residency wouldn't.
Part Of A Bigger Post-Dobbs Abortion Training Strategy
This fellowship isn't a one-off.
Since Roe fell in 2022, the national accreditation body for OB-GYN residencies has faced its own fight over whether abortion training can be required at all in states with pro-life laws on the books.
Some residency programs have started flying residents across state lines just to complete abortion training.
Moving that training into family medicine instead sidesteps a lot of that fight entirely.
Family doctors already see patients everywhere, in every state, for everything from physicals to prenatal care.
Training them to also perform abortions embeds the procedure into primary care itself, no OB-GYN referral required.
Michigan is simply the site where the paper trail happened to surface first.
The euphemisms will keep changing: full-spectrum care, reproductive justice, underserved populations.
What doesn't change is what fellows spend a year learning to do, and who doesn't survive the appointment.
None of this was hidden in a locked filing cabinet.
It took a records request and one pro-life OB-GYN willing to call it what it is, and now taxpayers, state legislators, and parents writing tuition checks to a public university know exactly what their money is training doctors to do.
Sources:
- Nancy Flanders, "University of Michigan fellowship trains primary care doctors to kill preborn children," Live Action News, 2026.
- Campus Reform, "University of Michigan fellowship trains family physicians to perform abortions," campusreform.org, 2026.
- Reproductive Health Access Project, "Reproductive Health Care and Advocacy Fellowship," reproductiveaccess.org.
- University of Michigan Medical School, "Reproductive Health Care & Advocacy Fellowship," medschool.umich.edu.
- The Daily Wire, "Texas Clinic Performs '67 Abortions in 17 Hours' Ahead of Texas Heartbeat Law," dailywire.com, September 2021.
