“Under a law expected to go into effect by April, women in California will be able to stop by their neighborhood pharmacy and buy birth control pills without a prescription,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Proponents argue that easing women’s access to birth control will reduce unintended pregnancies, which make up as many as half of all pregnancies nationwide.”

Not everyone cheered the result. “Critics have argued that not requiring a doctors visit to get birth control could reduce the number of women who get tested for STDs and breast cancer,” CBS San Francisco noted. Pro-life advocates have also been uneasy, concerned that allies of abortion providers would use readier birth control access to strengthen their legal and political position.

California’s proximity to Latin American areas affected by the Zika virus, however, spurred Pope Francis to put pro-lifers a bit more at ease. In recent remarks, he “suggested women threatened with the Zika virus could use artificial contraception, saying ‘avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil’ in light of the global epidemic,” the Associated Press reported. “The pope unequivocally rejected abortion as a response to the crisis in remarks Wednesday as he flew home after a five-day trip to Mexico.”

An accelerating trend

With the regulatory changes, the Golden State has positioned itself close to the forefront of a relatively new approach to clearing the use of birth control. “California will become the third state to permit pharmacist-issued birth control once the law, passed in 2013, gains regulatory approval,” the Times observed. “Similar legislation in Oregon was approved last year and enacted in January. Hawaii lawmakers introduced a similar measure last month, and advocates in New Mexico and Alaska say they want to follow suit.” Washington has permitted pharmacist-dispensed birth control for several decades.

The bill behind the law, SB493, was introduced last year by state Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina. The state pharmacy board had anticipated the law working its way through the Sacramento bureaucracy in time to take effect “as early as Oct. 1,” the Orange County Register reported last June. “The board recently finalized the protocols but they still have to be reviewed by multiple state agencies for legal and budgetary approval.”

Clearing SB493 was not as simple as waving along birth control. The law “also allows pharmacists to prescribe prescription-strength inhalers, gums and lozenges for nicotine addiction, as well as medication for travel abroad, including vaccinations and antibiotics. Along with hormonal contraceptives, these three categories of drugs are considered preventive services for major public health issues,” the Register noted.

Red tape and startups

But a technicality specific to pharmacists’ requirements took an additional toll on getting birth control onto shelves. The approval process “ground to a halt when several doctors and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists questioned whether pharmacists should have to check a woman’s blood pressure, saying the test would be an unnecessary barrier for women,” the Register reported separately last month. “The Obstetricians and Gynecologists group argued that blood pressure can be adequately obtained through self-reporting and that self-reporting would increase access to contraception.”

Meanwhile, Silicon Valley has moved on birth control at a characteristically speedy pace. “At a time when users can summon a meal, a massage or marijuana through a smartphone app, Nurx and fellow San Francisco startup Lemonaid Health, as well as a few other companies, are working to make getting hormonal birth control as easy as requesting an Uber ride,” the San Francisco Chronicle noted. “It’s an evolution of telemedicine to simplify access to some standard prescription drugs, a system designed to appeal to younger people already accustomed to on-demand gratification.”

Harris, embarked on a campaign to replace outgoing Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., promised lawmakers to “carefully review” the organization behind the tapes for “any violations of California law,” according to the Sacramento Bee.

The lawmakers, four Congressional Democrats, had “asked Harris and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to determine if officials from the Irvine-based Center for Medical Progress broke any laws when they posed as workers for a biotech company while recording Planned Parenthood physicians without their consent,” the Bee reported.

“Reps. Jan Schakowsky, Zoe Lofgren, Jerry Nadler and Yvette Clarke cited reports that founder David Daleiden filed paperwork to create a phony entity. They also asked the state’s top law enforcement official to look into possible violations of the Invasion of Privacy Act, which bars recording people without their permission.”

Swift litigation

Jason Taellious / flickr

Unlike previous efforts by activists to cast an unflattering light on the organization, the videos produced by the Center for Medical Progress captured lurid remarks concerning the sale and use of aborted fetal body parts and organs. In addition to creating a public relations mess for Planned Parenthood, the videos also raised alarms for a company that acts as procurement middleman between the abortion provider and researchers desirous of the parts.

The company, StemExpress, swiftly filed suit to protect themselves, drawing a temporary restraining order from Los Angeles Superior Court. According to the Associated Press, the order “prohibits the Center for Medical Progress from releasing any video of three high-ranking StemExpress officials taken at a restaurant in May. It appears to be the first legal action prohibiting the release of a video from the organization.”

In one video, a former StemExpress employee told the Center for Medical Progress that she expected to be “drawing blood” rather than “procuring tissue from aborted fetuses,” according to the Federalist.

Center for Medical Progress David Daleiden hit back at the StemExpress suit in a statement, calling the litigation “meritless” and accusing StemExpress of fostering an “illegal baby parts trade,” AP added.

High-stakes politics

Although the abortion issue has not dominated the national political scene for a number of years, the shock and surprise surrounding Daledien’s videos provoked an immediate response. “Republicans called on Congress to withhold federal funding for Planned Parenthood, and GOP lawmakers in several states opened investigations of their own,” the Bee observed. “Democrats pushed back by focusing scrutiny on the producer of the videos[.]” Despite the videos’ Irvine origin, the Golden State has remained a bulwark of pro-choice public sentiment.

“In liberal-leaning California, nearly 70 percent of adults say the government should not interfere with access to abortion, according to a Public Policy Institute of California Poll last year. That number is similar to majorities registered in Field Poll surveys since the 1980s.”

One reason for the political furor: the market for fetal body parts has not been tightly regulated. “Companies that obtain the tissue from clinics and sell it to laboratories exist in a gray zone, legally,” according to the New York Times. “Federal law says they cannot profit from the tissue itself, but the law does not specify how much they can charge for processing and shipping.” Planned Parenthood denied it broke these laws.

Big business

But the trade in fetal parts, which offers access to organ stem cells impossible to obtain in other ways, has become a quietly lucrative endeavor, especially for the two small California companies that have met much of researchers’ demand. The founder of StemExpress, for instance, “started StemExpress with $9,000,” the Times reported. “An article last November in Sacramento Business Journal said that the company had grown more than 1,300 percent in three years. Its revenue was $2.2 million, according to a report in August 2014 in Inc. magazine.”

AB 154 by Assemblywoman Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, will allow nurse practitioners, certified nurse-midwives and physician assistants to perform abortions.

Ironically, the 1973  Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade was made to put an end to unsafe abortions, performed by non-physicians. The decision made it possible for women to get safe, legal abortions from well-trained physicians.

An important Democrat political issue and campaign strategy for many years has been the claim that women needed access to doctor-performed abortions instead of illegal back-alley abortions by non-physicians.

“Many women died or suffered serious medical problems after attempting to self-induce their abortions or going to untrained practitioners who performed abortions with primitive methods or in unsanitary conditions,” the National Abortion Federation wrote in its “history of abortion.” “During this time, hospital emergency room staff treated thousands of women who either died or were suffering terrible effects of abortions provided without adequate skill and care.”

This time around, Planned Parenthood claims this bill is necessary to “integrate abortion care into current practice settings.”

The San Diego ACLU calls AB 154, a “reproductive health bill.”

Companion bill — AB 980

Assemblyman Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, authored another bill, AB 980, which will remove the current requirements that abortions are to be done in a medically surgical and sterile setting, with a post-abortion recovery area adequate for recovering patients, and a counseling area that is maintained and provides privacy for patients requesting it. Gov. Brown signed AB 980, as well.

Planned Parenthood, the bill’s sponsor, says the existing requirements are contrary to public interest and are even unconstitutional.

AB 980 “Prohibits the CBSC from adopting building standard regulations for construction requirements that differ between primary care clinics providing medication or aspiration abortion services and certain other primary care clinics.”

Access to abortion clinics

Atkins and proponents of the bill claim many women in California do not have access to abortion clinics, and end up waiting longer to obtain an abortion.

But as of 2009, California had 107 Planned Parenthood clinics around the state, the most of any state in the country. And that is just Planned Parenthood clinics; there are many clinics affiliated with Planned Parenthood, and many private doctors perform abortions.

Misinformation campaign

“Fifty-two percent of the counties do not have accessible abortion providers,” state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, testified at one committee hearing on AB 154. “Women must delay care or drive long distances, especially in rural areas.”

Jackson said there is a growing shortage of facilities to assist women with their “reproductive decisions.”

Statistics

Unfortunately, authoritative abortion numbers are hard to come by. Statistics come from two sources, the federal Centers for Disease Control and the The Guttmacher Institute, a private foundation.

California has not complied with CDC requests for abortion data in many years. And since CDC California totals are routinely incomplete, lawmakers turn to the Guttmacher Institute for data. But without data from California, Guttmacher reports are not reliable for our state.

California does not keep statistics on how many abortions are performed each year. Nor does the state report abortion statistics to the Center for Disease Control, as 48 other states do. So claims of a reduction in abortion access are questionable.

Overall, the U.S. abortion rate for 2009 was 15.1 abortions per 1,000 women of child-bearing years, 15 to 44 years old, according to the CDC. The abortion ratio was 227 abortions per 1,000 live births.

Guttmacher Institute

The Guttmacher Institute, the source of most abortion data, was founded in 1968 by Alan F. Guttmacher, former Planned Parenthood president and former vice president of the American Eugenics Society.

Planned Parenthood receives more than $360 million each year from taxpayers. It continues to fund the Guttmacher Institute, which has an annual budget of approximately $17 million. The Institute’s annual report lists more about its sources of funding.

Perspective

“The impact on lives, on the mother and the baby, and yes, there is a baby, is a leveling down of health care for women,” said Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber, at a committee hearing for AB 154. “It’s not a ‘procedure’ — it’s an operation. This is very dangerous.”

The federal 9th Circuit Court is known for its tyrannical ways. Now it has upheld California’s tyrannical ban on so-called “gay-to-straight therapy” for children.

The law, passed last year, on its face violates the 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Now this:

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal appeals court sided with California on Thursday and upheld the first law in the nation banning a psychological treatment that seeks to turn gay youth straight.

In a resounding, unanimous opinion, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found the state law barring the so-called gay aversion therapy legal in every respect.

The judges said trying to change a minor’s sexual orientation through intense therapy appeared dangerous, and that California lawmakers properly showed that the sexual orientation change efforts were outside the scientific mainstream and have been rejected for good reason.

“One could argue that children under the age of 18 are especially vulnerable with respect to sexual identity and that their parents’ judgment may be clouded by this emotionally charged issue as well,” Judge Susan Graber wrote for the court panel.

But who knows what’s best for a particular child:

A. Gov. Jerry Brown and the California legislature.

B. Judges on the 9th Circuit.

C. The kid’s parents.

Obvious answer: C.

Supposedly, some children given the therapy committed suicide. But how can a link be proven?

And while they’re at it, why don’t Gov. Brown, the Legislature and the 9th Circuit ban kids from using the Internet? I won’t link to them, but there obviously are a lot of pro-suicide sites out there. There’s also pro-Nazi stuff. Maybe some kid will read it and, imitating Hitler, blow his brains out, after doing the same thing to his own personal Eva Braun.

Ironically, and hypocritically, California also is making it easier to get an abortion here. And young girls can get abortions without parental consent.

So, a 12-year-old has a right to get an abortion, with who knows what kind of psychological consequences, especially without parental involvement. But the same 12-year-old can’t get “gay to straight therapy” from, say, a Christian-oriented psychologist?

I don’t have any kids. But if I did, my beloved and I would leave this state at the first blip of the ultrasound.

Assemblywoman Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, is pushing AB 154 to allow nurses, midwives and physician assistants to perform abortions.

Assemblywoman Toni Atkins

The CMA supports the bill.

But SB 491 by Sen. Ed Hernandez, to allow nurse practitioners to practice without the supervision of a physician, is opposed by the CMA.

Meanwhile, Assemblyman Dr. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, has another bill, AB 980, which would remove the current requirements that abortions are to be done in a medically surgical and sterile setting, with a post-abortion recovery area adequate for recovering patients, and a counseling area that is maintained and provides privacy for patients requesting it.

Thus far, the CMA has been silent on Pan’s bill.

Old arguments about abortion now ignored

Abortion bill redux: the San Diego connection

Atkins’ bill is a redux of bills authored in previous years by Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego. Kehoe authored SB 1501 last year, a bill originally written about boating and waterways. But Kehoe gutted it and replaced the language with the abortion bill.

Prior to SB 1501, there was SB 1338, also by Kehoe, which would have allowed nurse practitioners, nurse midwives and physician assistants to provide first-trimester abortions. Kehoe scaled her bill down to include only 41 providers involved in a UC San Francisco pilot program throughout the state. But a Senate committee deadlocked on the vote, and the bill failed to pass.

That bill was also sponsored by Planned Parenthoood, NARAL, the California Nurses Association and the SEIU. Most of the bill’s analysis was provided by these organizations.

However, Kehoe took the language from the failed bill, then placed it in budget bill SB 623. Kehoe received much criticism for trying to cram a failed bill into a budget trailer bill without the usual  committee hearings, public notification or debate.

ex-Sen. Christine Kehoe

I wrote about Kehoe’s bills last year.

From gerontology to abortion

Atkins’ bill stems from a California “pilot project” which started as a program to increase access to gerontology care in 1973 and morphed into being used to train midwives and nurses to perform surgical abortion procedures.

The abortion program was quietly concealed in the pilot gerontology program behind a phrase in the code “expanding early pregnancy care.” But since 2006, this project has been used in some cities to train nurses and medical assistants to do abortions.

And state regulations were suspended in order to allow “Nurse Midwives, Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants” to do these procedures, according to former Assemblywoman Linda Halderman and former Sen. Sam Aanestad. Both lawmakers looked into the pilot program while still in office, and tried to get it stopped.

Planned Parenthood claims Atkins’ bill is necessary to “integrate abortion care into current practice settings.”

Voters don’t approve

A recent poll of California voters sharply rejected the idea of allowing nurse practitioners and physician assistants to conduct abortions. By an even greater margin, 76 percent to 18 percent, voters reject the notion of also giving nurse midwives the ability to provide abortions.

The poll, which surveyed 600 registered voters in April 2013, was conducted by Smith-Johnson Research of Sacramento with a sampling error of plus or minus 4 percent.  (See survey ).

The bills are scheduled for hearing in the Senate Appropriations Committee on Monday, Aug. 12.

By Katy Grimes

While other states have been passing laws restricting when a woman can have an abortion, for several years California politicians have been trying to move legislation in the other direction. Taking up efforts defeated last year, Assemblywoman Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, is pushing AB 154 to allow nurses, midwives and physician assistants to perform abortions.

California’s back-door into new policy

A California “pilot project” which started as a program to increase access to gerontology care in 1973 morphed into being used to train midwives and nurses to perform surgical abortion procedures.

The abortion program was quietly concealed in the pilot gerontology program behind a phrase in the code “expanding early pregnancy care.” But since 2006, this project has been used in some cities to train nurses and medical assistants to do abortions.

And state regulations were suspended in order to allow “Nurse Midwives, Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants” to do these procedures, according to former Assemblywoman Linda Halderman and former Sen. Sam Aanestad. Both lawmakers looked into the pilot program while still in office, and tried to get it stopped.

Planned Parenthood claims this bill is necessary to “integrate abortion care into current practice settings.”

39 states still prefer doctors

If signed into law, California would be the fifth state to permit non-physician abortions. Thirty-nine other states require a licensed physician to perform abortions.

Assemblyman Dr. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, has another bill, AB 980, which would remove the current requirements that abortions are to be done in a medically surgical and sterile setting, with a post-abortion recovery area adequate for recovering patients, and a counseling area that is maintained and provides privacy for patients requesting it.

Planned Parenthood, the bill’s sponsor, says the existing requirements are contrary to public interest and are even unconstitutional.

I spoke with several nurses who said that midwives are unregulated and used primarily to assist with normal, healthy, full-term live births. A woman delivering with a midwife that shows any signs of complications is rushed to a doctor at a hospital in a sterile setting.

Previous legislation

Last year Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, authored SB 1501, a bill originally written about boating and waterways. But Kehoe gutted it and replaced the language with the abortion bill.

Prior to SB 1501, there was SB 1338, also by Kehoe, which would have allowed nurse practitioners, nurse midwives and physician assistants to provide first-trimester abortions. Kehoe scaled her bill down to include only 41 providers that are involved in a UC San Francisco pilot program throughout the state. But a Senate committee deadlocked on the vote, and the bill failed to pass.

That bill was also sponsored by Planned Parenthoood, NARAL, the California Nurses Association, and the SEIU. Most of the bill’s analysis was provided by these organizations.

However, Kehoe took the language from the failed bill, then placed it in budget bill SB 623. Kehoe received much criticism for trying to cram a failed bill into a budget trailer bill without the usual  committee hearings, public notification or debate.

I wrote about Kehoe’s bills last year.

Back to the future

Atkins and proponents of the bill claim many women in California do not have access to abortion clinics, and end up waiting longer to obtain an abortion.

But as of 2009, California had 107 Planned Parenthood clinics around the state, the most of any state in the country. And that is just Planned Parenthood clinics; there are many clinics affiliated with Planned Parenthood, and many private doctors perform abortions.

So what’s the problem?

According to Planned Parenthood on its Web page advocating for AB 154, “Early abortion access is a critical public health issue. An estimated one in three women will decide to terminate a pregnancy by age 45. Yet many women often do not have sufficient access to early abortions because of the limited number of physicians providing the services in their communities. Almost half of the counties in California have no accessible abortion provider, requiring women to travel significant distances to terminate a pregnancy or wait for an appointment for services.”

This is ironic. An important Democrat political issue and campaign strategy for many years has been the claim that women needed access to doctor-performed abortions instead of illegal back-alley abortions by non-physicians.

“Existing law makes it a public offense, punishable by a fine not exceeding $10,000 or imprisonment, or both, for a person to perform or assist in performing a surgical abortion if the person does not have a valid license to practice as a physician,” language in the bill explains. Should these bills be passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, that language would be eliminated by these bills, with non-physicians allowed to perform the abortions.

Opponents of these bills also say poor ethnic women are being unfairly targeted.

The Assembly passed Atkins’ legislation last week on a vote of 50-25. Only one Democrat, Assemblyman Rudy Salas of Bakersfield, voted with Republicans in opposition. Four Assembly members abstained from voting: Travis Allen, Ken Cooley, Steve Fox and Chris Holden.

The bill next will be heard and debated in the Senate.

By Dave Roberts

California women abort their unborn children at a significantly higher rate than the rest of the country, accounting for nearly one in five abortions in the United States. But for many Democratic politicians and abortion providers there aren’t enough abortions in the Golden State. Rather than keeping it safe, legal and rare, as the slogan goes, they are determined to expand abortion access, even if it might result in more injuries to women.

State Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, has authored SB 1338, which expands the professions that are allowed to perform surgical abortions. Currently only licensed physicians and surgeons are allowed to do so. Anyone else would be subject to a $10,000 fine and imprisonment. SB 1338 would allow registered nurses, nurse practitioners and certified midwives who have received training by the end of the year also to perform aspiration abortions.

Aspiration is the most common type of abortion, primarily done in the first trimester, in which the baby is vacuumed out of the uterus. The technique is considered the safest abortion method — provided, of course, that you’re not the one being aborted. But it’s still an invasive procedure with sharp instruments, and complications can arise.

Those complications and whether they will increase when less skilled, less educated and less experienced people are allowed to vacuum uteruses were at the heart of the debate on SB 1338 in the Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee meeting on Thursday.

“A rigorous, state-approved pilot project has demonstrated that clinicians can perform with high rates of patient safety and satisfaction,” Kehoe told the committee. “Advanced clinicians already perform surgical and non-surgical procedures: IUD insertion and removal, biopsies and some forms of insemination.”

Kehoe’s bill originally applied to all nurses, practitioners and midwives. But she watered it down to apply to those 41 people in the state who have received aspiration abortion training through a University of California, San Francisco study. It’s possible that more people could be trained, however, by the January deadline. Representatives of the California Nurses Association said there are 16,000 nurse practitioners in the state who might also want to perform abortions.

The more the better, as far as Kathy Kneer, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, is concerned. “Over half the counties do not have  providers who will perform abortions for Medi-Cal patients,” said Kneer. “That requires women to drive long distances. We believe it’s very important that patients have access to early, safe abortion procedures. We believe that practitioners who they see for their regular routine care should also be able to offer this so they can provide continuity of care.”

Abortion study

Also leading the drumbeat for more abortions is Tracy Weitz, a UCSF associate professor in obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive science, who led the abortion study.

“We know that two things make abortion safer: making it legal, and doing it as early as possible in the pregnancy,” Weitz told the committee. “The widespread use of aspiration abortion technique as a preferred method for ending pregnancies in the first trimester is what has made abortion incredibly safe. The question of who can safely perform those procedures can now be answered by scientific evidence.”

During her four-year demonstration project, 41 clinicians performed nearly 8,000 abortions. It took about seven days and 45 abortions for each clinician to gain sufficient competency. Only 1.6 percent of the procedures resulted in complications, according to the study, with only six women requiring hospital care. All recovered “without any long-term physical harm,” Weitz said.

But the reliability of those numbers and the ethics of the study’s procedure came under assault by Assemblywoman Linda Halderman, R-Fresno, who is also a licensed surgeon. She has witnessed aspiration abortions, and said that the procedure can include the use of extremely sharp instruments in the blood-filled cervix to scrape its fetal contents.

“Incomplete abortion means that some of the fetal parts are left inside,” she said. “And that is in fact a known complication that is uncommon, but it’s reported in this procedure. However, there are additional complications that are reported. These are associated normally with surgical procedures done by board-certified obstetricians and gynecologists. The published rates (of complications) are between 3 and 5 percent. And they consist of incomplete abortions, failed abortions, hemorrhaging, excessive bleeding, anesthesia-related complications, bleeding within the uterus walls themselves, infections, cervical injury including cervical tear, and uterine injury which rarely requires hysterectomy.”

‘Disturbing’

Given all of those possibilities of something going wrong, Halderman said she found it “disturbing” that, in data published by pro-choice ob-gyn organizations, there is a 3-5 percent rate of complications when abortions are done by experienced doctors and surgeons, but Weitz’s study asserts that there was only a 1.6 percent rate of complications in abortions performed by nurses and midwives learning the procedure.

Halderman is concerned that there was not adequate follow-up about potential problems. Less than 10 percent of the women were interviewed in person after their abortion. Most interviews were done by phone or a mailed survey and some women were not contacted at all. She pointed out that the study has yet to be published in a medical journal, undergoing peer review.

“This is so outside the standard of research care that I am concerned that there may be violations here that may be of a legal magnitude,” said Halderman. “In particular, locations that were chosen for these pilot projects have substantial portions of minority women. And if the purpose is to increase access to early abortion, I don’t think the way we want to do that is to compromise women’s safety.”

Informed consent?

Halderman is also concerned that the women who participated in the study were not all provided with informed consent forms in their native languages (only English and Spanish forms were provided).

“It is for these reasons that I regretfully ask that you must vote no on this project until we have some data, until we have some proof and until we have some real answers on whether or not protocols of research were actually followed,” Halderman concluded.

Also speaking against SB 1338 was Carol Hogan, communications director for the California Catholic Conference. She said that a majority of Californians oppose allowing nurse practitioners and physician assistants to perform first trimester abortions, citing a poll of 778 people conducted in late March by Smith Johnson Research.

“The author’s rationale is to increase access to abortion, thereby increasing the actual number of abortions performed in California,” said Hogan. “For almost any medical procedure, people with either private or government health insurance have to schedule their appointments well in advance and may well have to travel some distance. Even toenail surgery or earwax removal is not available on the same day or the same week that the patient desires it. To have an abortion is a serious decision, one that ends the life of an unborn child and may change the life of the woman. Does it need to be as available as an aspirin at the corner drug store? They claim that abortions should be safe, legal and rare. This law would make abortion less safe and less rare.”

Wynette Sills, a Sacramento pro-life activist, said, “They are increasing the certification for pet groomers to ensure the health of our pets. So why would we turn around and lower the health standards of women? Women deserve better. In this pilot study with 8,000 women hurt and 8,000 human lives killed, it was found to be fairly safe for the women. Yet the intent is to expand abortion throughout the state. While it might have been found safe under rigorous research conditions, as you move away from UCSF and out into the Central and Imperial Valley, I don’t think we can ensure the same level of supervision and safety for women.”

Although the committee has a 6-3 Democrat majority, surprisingly it deadlocked 4-4 on SB 1338 with two Democrats voting against it. One of those Democrats, Juan Vargas, who represents Chula Vista, said he could not support a policy affecting women’s health based on a study that had yet to be published and peer reviewed.

Mark Wyland, R- San Juan Capistrano, agreed that the committee had insufficient information to make an informed decision on such a technical issue. “It seems to me, given what we know, that it’s a big leap to say people who have had a few days’ training and a few supervised procedures should be doing something like this,” he said. “I just think that’s an awfully big leap.”

Although the bill failed to make it out of the committee, it has not been, well, aborted. Kehoe’s representative said she plans to bring it back to the same committee on May 7 for a vote only, no testimony allowed.

But, now California liberal politicians are pushing legislation to allow non-doctor medical workers to perform abortions.

“Reproductive rights,” abortion and contraception have become the lightening rod in this political cycle. Women are demanding access to free contraception, playing right into  the Obamacare agenda. But all of this liberated sex seems only to be resulting in unwanted babies and an increase in sexually transmitted diseases.

Sponsored by Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, “The California bill, by Sen. Christine Kehoe, D- San Diego, would allow nurse practitioners, physicians assistants and certified nurse midwives to perform a procedure known as ‘aspiration’ abortion, which employs a suction method to remove a fetus from a uterus,” the Sacramento Bee reported.

The Desert Tortoise, Delta Smelt and Spotted Owl have more rights than the “unborn.”  Convicted prisoners have “prisoners rights,” and those convicted of the most heinous crimes on death row die of old age after exhausting years and years of taxpayer-paid legal appeals.

Interestingly, when a woman is obviously pregnant, people ask, “what will you name the baby?” “what color will you paint the baby’s room?” and “How are you feeling? Many pregnant women tell stories of how they tried for years to have a baby.

But if a women doesn’t want the baby, it is called “the unborn” or a “fetus.” And the operation to get rid of it is a “procedure.”

Kehoe’s bill, SB 1501, will allow abortion by medication or aspiration techniques to be performed by nurses, medical assistants, midwives and nurse practitioners who don’t have medical degrees.

Allowing a physician assistant, nurse or a midwife to perform this serious medical procedure is really pushing the line of medical ethics, and a degradation of medical care.  Dental assistants are not even allowed to do a tooth extraction.

I wonder how many of California’s legislators would agree to have a midwife  perform such a sensitive and potentially dangerous operation on their wives or daughters?

Nurses that I spoke to said that midwives are unregulated and used primarily to assist with normal, healthy, full-term live births. A woman delivering with a midwife that shows any signs of complications is rushed to a hospital to a doctor.

Expanding Government Healthcare