California Counters National Abortion Trend
Leave it to California to buck a national trend. As states across the U.S. enact new laws restricting abortion, Golden State lawmakers are on the cusp of passing legislation that could greatly expand access to the procedure by allowing nurse practitioners, physicians’ assistants and certified nurse midwives to perform first-trimester abortions. The bill passed the state senate Monday and is expected to be approved by the California assembly this week.
Pro-life groups say the new law could put women’s health at risk, though a recently published study found abortions administered by these professionals, known as advanced-practice clinicians, are as safe as those performed by physicians. Supporters used that study, conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, to help secure the bill’s passage. (Four other states — Oregon, Montana, Vermont and New Hampshire — already allow advance-practice clinicians to provide abortions or do not explicitly ban them from doing so.) Pro-choice groups, meanwhile, are heralding advancement of the California bill as an increasingly rare victory in the effort to make abortion easier to access.