Politics

California bill proposes extending pilot program for non-doctor abortions

Back at the end of April, Senate Bill 1338 swept across the headlines in California. This bill would have made it legal for non-doctors to perform abortions and would have brought industry standards to an all-time low. Pro-lifers hailed the halting of this bill in early May as a victory for life, but the victory is short-lived.

SB 1338 was born out of the pilot training program titled the “Health Workforce Pilot Project No. 171″ – a project where non-doctors were legally allowed to perform over 5,000 abortions in California. Through the program, the hope of many favoring abortion was to demonstrate and collect data supporting the safety of non-doctors performing abortions and, ultimately, to make the practice legal. While the bill was slapped down previously, California State Senator Christine Kehoe isn’t quite ready to admit defeat.

This week she introduced a new bill, SB 623, which would extend the pilot program through January 1, 2012. While this would not legalize abortion by non-doctors in California, the bill poses a huge threat to women’s health and to the standards of the medical industry. This bill was originally a proposal for regulation of toxic paint used on boats, but it has been twisted into an under-the-table attempt to get this passed under our noses.

As Dana Cody, president and executive director of Life Legal Defense Foundation, said:

This is no more than the use of parliamentary procedure to pull a bait and switch. Any data forthcoming from this legislation will doubtless be used to expand non-physician abortions in the State of California, to say nothing of the risk to women currently undergoing these ‘pilot project’ abortions.

Pro-life advocates who wish to make their voices heard are being encouraged to contact their members of the California State Assembly and Senate and ask them to vote “no” on SB 623.

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  • peach

    The pilot program was completely successful and showed it was safe.
    These “non-doctors” aren’t just random people off the street. They’re physician assistants, nurse practitioners and certified nurse midwives who have gone through training to be able to perform these abortions. And the abortions they can perform are only first trimester abortions which include pharmacological agents and aspiration abortions, which has a very low risk of complications.
    From a pro-choice perspective, Bill 1338 is fantastic for women and reproductive health.
    You can still disagree with this bill since you believe abortion is wrong all together, but that can be your only argument against this bill. Get your facts straight. This fear-mongering is unnecessary.

    • Kitchenofwonder

      Hey Peach, why don’t you get in the market to kill babies!

    • Michelle Stewart

      PEACH said, “From a pro-choice perspective, Bill 1338 is fantastic for women and reproductive health.”  Really? I find such proposed compromises in medical care to be imminently dangerous to women’s reproductive health and general welfare!  
      These proposed bills promote compromises which are for one surgical procedure — not a range of generally “simple” surgeries. This fact, alone, should alert people to pay more attention!

      Surgical abortion is an invasive medical procedure* that entails the same lasting consequences as other surgical procedures. In the case of pharmaceutical abortion, the risks are greater, due to the unsupervised nature of the actual abortion. Nurse-midwifes, physicians assistants and nurse practitioners may undergo training in the abortion procedure, but they have not received a physician’s training to diagnose systemic conditions that may jeopardize a patient’s life. In fact, these paraprofessionals are prevented by limitations of license from making such diagnoses. 

      The original rationale for legalized abortion was to move the procedure out of back alleys into medical clinics for women’s safety. Under the proposed law, abortion will move into the hotels, bedroom or locker-room bathrooms, and campgrounds via pharmacological abortifacients. The abortion industry is already on a slippery slope of compromise in quality of care that leads directly back to the “back-alley”.Although I am pro-life, I find the mere suggestion of this bill to be logically and medically repugnant. 

      * Ironically, prolife centers who perform limited diagnostic ultrasounds are castigated as unskilled performers of “painfully, invasive” medical procedures by the same group who promulgate the truly painful, invasive practice of abortion.

      • peach

         Sorry, but how do you figure abortions will move to bedrooms, hotels, locker-bathrooms and campgrounds? That’s quite the leap. And as I stated, the pilot program was successful.

      • Guest

        Really? Because I’ve had Physician’s Assistants and Nurse Practitioners diagnose my health problems and prescribe medications for me. They’re highly-trained professionals who would be practicing in safe, sterile environments just like doctors. 

    • Shelley

      Well, I think the fear-mongering might be necessary when you’re trying to convince people that you care about women while simultaneously working to erode their rights. 

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  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_5HJWFH2WQRDJ5RPPPQQH2UW4DE John G

    Should be titled “The Back Alley Abortion Bill” …

  • Lauren

    You “pro-lifers” are insane. You’re PRO-life but then you’re PRO-war. You’re pro-life but then you’re ANTI-healthcare for all children. What the hell is wrong with you people? And of course, you insert RELIGION into EVERYTHING. The Bible also says that you should not EAT ANIMALS. But how many of you Pro-lifers are vegetarian?! Those are still breathing, feeling lives that you are killing every time you purchase FLESH. Disgusting! 

    • http://twitter.com/CalFreiburger Calvin Freiburger

      Sure looks irrefutable to me! Yep, guess I’d better quit the website, renounce God, and start donating to Planned Parenthood…..

    • Oldmanbob

      I find it strange that people can  say “the Bible says” and not cite a chapter and verse.  Having read the Bible cover to cover and never having found such a verse I ask you:  Chapter and verse?????

      Also Passover required the killing and eating a lamb and Jesus ate the Passover and Never Sinned.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Anne-Gross-Beal/1116621445 Anne Gross Beal

      what makes you think we’re pro-war? what makes you think we’re against health care for children? What makes you think the Bible says we shouldn’t eat animals? I believe you’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid! And if you’d ever bothered to visit a Pro-Life organization you would learn the awful truth, that the women on the front lines of the Pro-Life movement have all been victims of abortion themselves! In fact, it’s almost like a pre-requisite to a leadership position (since I’ve never had an abortion, I don’t qualify). It is mind-numbing to meet so many women, who talk about their abortions and how it was the biggest mistake of their lives, and realize, from what they’re telling you, why it was so many of your own friends drank themselves to death in their 50s. Because that is what happens to women who have abortions in their youth: without treatment, they all drink themselves to death in their 50s.