Women's health providers became more politically active following the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs decision that rescinded abortion rights, according to a June 27 article in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law.
The research, co-authored by Kelly Hunter of Northwestern University, Michael E. Shepherd of the University of Michigan, Izatt, Eve Bryner of American University, and Alister Martin of Harvard Medical School, examined whether the 2022 Supreme Court ruling prompted women's health providers to become more engaged compared to other politically active physician groups.
The study analyzed data from 6,205 physicians involved in Vot-ER, a healthcare-based get-out-the-vote campaign. It found that women's health providers increased their share among Vot-ER physician participants from about 10% in 2020 to over 15% in 2022—a roughly 50% increase. The timing of physician signups was also assessed around the leak of the Supreme Court's draft opinion in May 2022 using a regression discontinuity design. Researchers found a statistically significant increase between 4.8 and 6.7 percentage points in badge orders from women's health providers immediately after the leak.
"Physicians who joined Vot-ER were already civically engaged, making it more difficult—not easier—to detect differences between groups. Yet even within this highly engaged population, women's health providers became more politically active after Dobbs," Izatt said. "That suggests the relationship is meaningful and not simply a product of comparing politically interested people to politically uninterested people." She added: "This approach is often considered one of the strongest forms of observational evidence available to social scientists... In many ways, this is about as close as researchers can get to an experiment when studying major policy changes that have already happened."
The research showed that about 6.4% of women's health providers voted in their first midterm election in 2022 compared with 5.7% for other providers; among Democratic physicians specifically, women's health specialists were also more likely—by about 6.3 percentage points—to vote than those with other specialties.
The difference between female and male women's health providers was statistically insignificant overall—suggesting professional role rather than gender drove mobilization following Dobbs.
Izatt said, "Healthcare is already connected to democratic participation because policy decisions shape patients' lives and providers' work. Dobbs simply made that connection especially visible."
