In the two counties around nurse practitioner Samantha Marsee’s clinic in rural northeastern Maryland, there’s not a single clinic that provides abortions. And until recently, Marsee herself wasn’t trained to treat patients who wanted to end a pregnancy.
“I didn’t really have a lot of knowledge about abortion care,” she said.
After Roe v. Wade was overturned, she watched state after state ban abortion, and Marsee decided to take part in the first class of a new training program offered by the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Maryland-Baltimore.
Marsee learned how to administer medication abortion pills, procedural abortions, and highly effective birth control methods, including hormonal implants and intrauterine devices.
She cares for patients with all sorts of everyday ailments and health conditions, including pregnancy. “I do have patients who come in for confirmation of pregnancies and then disclose they don’t want to continue with the pregnancy for whatever reason,” Marsee said.
Now, with her new training, she can help.
“I want people to know I’m here, but I don’t want to cause too much outrage and attention,” says Samantha Marsee, a nurse practitioner in rural northeastern Maryland who recently received medical training to provide abortion care.(Samantha Marsee)
Expanding the pool of health care providers with reproductive health care skills outside of the state’s urban centers is vital, said Mary Jo Bondy, associate dean of the School of Graduate Studies at the University of Maryland-Baltimore. She helped create the new training program.
In 2022, Maryland lawmakers passed the Abortion Care Access Act, expanding the type of medical care nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and certified nurse-midwives could offer, including abortion, and the training program “prioritized that group,” Bondy said.
Those types of professionals have long provided abortions to rural patients in other states, Bondy said, and “we have proof that receiving this care from an advanced practice clinician is safe.”
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As many as 120 health care providers will be trained over the next two years. Some participants have said they are returning to communities that are hostile to abortion rights.
On Nov. 5, voters approved a ballot measure to protect reproductive rights in the Maryland Constitu …