Non-physician abortion bill signed into law

California Governor Jerry Brown lowers barriers to abortions

Governor Jerry Brown. Justin Sullivan / Getty Images.

Governor Brown has signed two pro-abortion bills. One, AB 154, allows first-trimester surgical abortions by midwives, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants. The other, AB 980, repeals building code provisions applicable to facilities providing surgical abortions. As a result, abortion clinics can now evade building standards.

AB 154 follows a period of testing non-physician abortions. The results of the study showed a complication rate twice that of abortions performed by physicians. However, the figures are hazy because Planned Parenthood refused the requests of evaluators for patient records, offering Planned Parenthood abstracts instead.

Life Legal Defense Foundation questions the decision. In 1997 the California Supreme Court ruled that physicians could not perform abortions on minors without informed consent for the procedure. AB 154 now allows minors to get abortions from non-physicians.

Indeed, the combination of AB 154 and AB 980 being enacted in the same session seems to cry out for an answer to the question: What was wrong with those “back-alley” abortions that abortion proponents kept referencing to argue for the legalization of abortion? Wasn’t it that they were done by midwives and the like, not doctors, in unsafe, non-medical settings?

Read the full post on the Life Legal Defense Foundation website.