California bill would allow PA, ARNP and Midwives to perform abortions
California State lawmaker Christine Kehoe is proposing legislature to allow nurse practitioners, physician assistants and nurse midwives to perform routine abortions in the first trimester of pregnancy.
Only doctors may perform aspiration abortions, the most common method of terminating early pregnancies, under existing state law.
Kehoe (D-San Diego) claims that some areas do not have enough doctors, authoring the proposal, which is co-sponsored by the heads of both legislative houses.
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“We believe it will give many California women access to earlier, safer procedures in the first trimester of their pregnancy,” Kehoe said at a news conference in Sacramento on Tuesday.
Abortion rights proponents celebrated Kehoe’s measure as one that bucks the national trend of restricting access to the procedure.
The Alan Guttmacher Institute, which tracks reproductive health issues, found that legislators across the country proposed a record number of laws limiting abortion last year and that 135 became law.
Ana Rodriguez, executive director of ACCESS Women’s Health Justice, said women often call her group complaining of the distances they must travel to end a pregnancy safely. One Central Valley mother of four had to take a 3 a.m. bus to San Francisco, Rodriguez said, and a resident near Lake Tahoe took an train to a hospital and saved on hotel costs by sleeping in a restroom at the facility.
“No one should face these hurdles to access a safe and legal medical procedure,” Rodriguez said.
