In light of the recent, shocking revelations about abortion clinic horrors, including all kinds of health code violations, it would only be logical to think that state governments would be reading the riot act to these clinics, telling them if they want to stay open, they had better comply with the law. Apparently, that kind of thinking doesn’t prevail in California, which is now poised to a pass a bill allowing non-physicians to perform abortions.
As reported by Christine Rousselle, according to bill AB154, which has passed both legislative houses and is expected to be signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, “a nurse practitioner, certified nurse midwife, or physician assistant would be allowed to do a suction aspiration or medical abortion on a woman” during the first trimester. What kind of madness is this? (For a picture of a baby’s development at 12 weeks, see here.)
As Rousselle notes, “In California, if an animal needs an abortion, the procedure must be carried out by a licensed veterinary surgeon. It appears now that the State of California views humans as deserving a lower standard of care than a housecat.”
But that, of course, would be in keeping with the upside-down mentality that makes it a crime to disturb the nest of certain endangered birds – recognizing that the eggs contain a potential baby bird – but which celebrates a woman’s right to abort the baby in her womb.
As to the madness of allowing non-physicians or non-surgeons to perform abortions, whatever happened to the old Bill Clinton adage that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare”? The new California bill can only have one potential result, namely, to make abortion, which is already legal in California, less safe and less rare.
As stated explicitly in the bill, “With the provisions for training in the bill and the amendments that clarify physician supervision, AB 154 addresses patient safety while expanding access for these services.”
Note those words carefully: “while expanding access for these services,” which really says it all. (For the record, Joel Pollack reports that “the training [required by the bill] is to be provided by the Board of Registered Nursing, not by physicians, and the protocols for defining ‘supervision’ have not been specified. There is nothing in the legislation requiring a physician to be present or on-site during an abortion.”)
Now, it is well known that being an abortion doctor is not considered to be a glamorous profession in the medical world (although it can certainly be quite lucrative), and over the decades, not only have many hospitals stopped providing abortions, but many doctors have dropped out of the business as well.
Charles Wysong, founder and president of the American Rights Coalition, believes that malpractice suits have played a major role in this: “We began to notice a steady decline in both clinics and abortions after we began helping injured women sue abortion clinics for malpractice in 1986.”
He adds, “Slowly, doctors began finding that while abortion may be legal, malpractice is not. This accountability caused many doctors to quit or never enter the abortion practice.”
This could be one of the reasons that 1,500 abortion clinics have closed in the past 22 years (according to a January 21, 2013 report on LifeSiteNews.com, “In 1991 there were 2,176 surgical abortion clinics nationwide; today there are 660 and falling.”)
All of which means there is a dearth of potential abortion providers, which means that states like California must find a way to find more ways to abort babies in the absence of trained doctors. But of course!
Tragically, with more and more news of abortion clinic abuses leaking out to the public, including heartrending, barbaric stories coming directly from abortion clinic staffs, and with the recognition that there may be more men like Kermit Gosnell out there (and with that, more abortion houses of horror), what does California do? It passes a bill allowing nurse practitioners and others to suck out the “contents of the uterus” with a vacuum (which, as pro-life leaders have pointed out, is already a potentially dangerous procedure for the mother even when performed by a doctor).
Of course, the “safest” abortion procedure that can be performed still means the termination of the baby’s life in the womb (that is, after all, a tiny child being sucked out or sliced up), not to mention the potential emotional scarring of the mother for life or the possibility that the abortion will impair the mother’s ability to conceive in the future. But now California is poised to add insult to injury, with the endorsement of the California Medical Association at that.
And to think: The same people who pushed so hard for the legalization of abortion so that a woman wouldn’t have to get a back alley abortion with a wire coat hanger are the same ones who not only ignore the pervasive health code violations in scores of clinics nationwide, but they are taking things one step further by backing a bill whereby non-physicians can suck a baby out of its mother’s womb.
This is what is called “progress” in the pro-abortion movement.
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