The plight of the pregnant surgeon

A vast majority of respondents to questionnaires sent from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore to 5,000 female surgeons reported a significant stigma attached to being pregnant, particularly during training. While younger respondents felt significantly less stigma than those who had trained a generation or two earlier, a sizable majority of the young women—over two-thirds of them—still believed that being pregnant during training could negatively affect or even jeopardize a surgical career.