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Politics and abortion trump women’s health in California

November 21st, 2013
Safety concerns about a new law are dismissed because pro-lifers happened to voice them.

California officials have rolled out a new state law that permits non-doctors to perform first trimester abortions. While the blogosphere tussles over whether the loosened regulations endanger or liberate women seeking abortions, this one woman worries that, in their fervour to see reproductive justice done, pro-choice activists have written off some very real health risks simply because pro-lifers were among those voicing their concern.

Signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, the new law authorizes non-physicians such as nurses and midwives to perform aspiration abortions, a first-trimester procedure that involves inserting a small tube through the cervix to remove the fetus. Before the bill was passed, only doctors could perform such procedures because many in the medical field feared that possible complications — incomplete abortions, haemorrhages, infections, cervical injuries, uterine perforations — could endanger a woman unless there was someone trained to respond.

Advocates of the new law defend this looser regulation by asserting that it will expand access to cheaper reproductive services (aka abortions), particularly for the  1% of California women who live in rural counties without an abortion provider. They claim that the rate of complications during aspirations had only a marginal increase when performed by a non-physician and, more pointedly, that the “hysteria” over lowered standards of care was driven primarily by anti-abortion propaganda.

This seemed to be the central talking point throughout the legislative debate. A skeptic would question whether the expanded access merited the potential health risks, and the pro-choice lobby would dismiss these concerns as utterly disingenuous, not worthy of any further rebuttal.

Let me confess: I understand why pro-choice activists might want to question the motive behind laws that restrict access to abortion under the guise of advancing a woman’s health. There is certainly a cheering section of the pro-life movement that recognizes that these types of objections are a backdoor to cutting, if not ending, the number of abortions nationwide, just as they recognize that these same concerns can be used to thwart new legislation aimed at expanding abortion access.

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