Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
The orchestrators of the so-called “War on Women” who claim to care about women’s health are celebrating a move by California Governor Jerry Brown to allow non-physicians to perform abortions on women in his state, ironically claiming that these reduced health standards somehow support the health and well-being of women.
LifeSiteNews is reporting that California just became the fifth state to allow, or to not explicitly ban, the practice of allowing midwives, nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants to perform first trimester suction aspiration abortions.
The law, which was proposed by Democrats and passed by a near party-line vote of 25-11 last May, is supposed to offset the growing shortage of abortion providers which pro-abortion lawmakers say presents a significant barrier for women.
Passage of the law was greatly influenced by a study conducted by Tracy Weitz, director of UCSF’s Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health program, which determined how safe non-physician abortions were in relation to those performed by physicians. Weitz and her researchers were granted a special waiver from state law to allow clinicians to perform the procedures and conducted the study in collusion with Planned Parenthood facilities and other abortion providers in the state.
According to Time, of the 11,487 abortions provided between 2007 and 2011 which were included in the study, 1.3 percent had complications; the rate of complication for non-physician clinicians was 1.8 percent; for physicians it was .09 percent. The researchers concluded that the complication rates were “clinically equivalent” – even though they were obviously higher.
California appears to be bucking the national trend toward improving clinical standards at abortion clinics with this new law and another bill he signed that actually lowers standards for abortion facilities.
State Senator Mimi Walters, R-Irvine, was one of many lawmakers who objected to these lowered standards, saying that the law “does put women’s health at risk.”
These new laws prove that pro-abortion forces want to make abortion available at any cost, even if that means risking the health and lives of the women they claim to be serving.
A commenter on the LifeSite story summed it up most succinctly: “They used to say ‘safe, legal, and rare.’ It’s quite obvious that they only want ‘legal’.”
© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace® http://www.womenofgrace.com
