Step Aside, I'm a Doctor [View all]

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Sanity!


Step Aside, I'm a Doctor
Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux
September 17, 2013

California's passage of a law allowing nurse practitioners and other advanced-practice clinicians to perform early-term abortions shows the importance of having the medical community weigh in.


It’s hard to miss the fallout from the barrage of abortion restrictions that came out of state legislatures this year. Four abortion clinics in rural Texas announced plans to close after determining it would be too expensive to comply with a new state law imposing unnecessary medical standards. A clinic in Ohio, where similar laws have been passed, say they may also have to close. Iowa’s telemedicine abortion program—a creative workaround designed to bring first-trimester abortion to women in rural parts of the state—was recently shut down by the state medical board. In states nationwide, the hurdles to access safe, high-quality abortion care are getting higher and higher.

But California is bucking the trend. A law that would allow advanced-practice clinicians—a technical term for nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, and certified nurse midwives—to perform surgical first-trimester abortions passed in the California legislature in late August. If Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, signs the bill as expected, California will join Oregon, Montana, Vermont, and New Hampshire as the fifth state to allow clinicians to perform first-trimester abortions. Pro-life groups who oppose the law claim that allowing anyone other than a physician to perform abortions endangers women’s health. Their argument might have held more weight had it not been for a group of researchers at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

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http://prospect.org/article/step-aside-im-doctor