The abortion industry is mobilizing in an effort to allow non-physicians to commit abortions in North Carolina.
Planned Parenthood South Atlantic filed a request on Monday asking that the law requiring only physicians be allowed to dispense abortion pills be blocked. In a press release from the ACLU, the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade was described as having triggered a “public health crisis” — and as abortion is still legal in North Carolina, the ACLU claimed that countless women are traveling there to undergo abortions, allegedly making it difficult for local women to undergo the procedures. The solution, in their opinion, is to allow non-physicians to commit abortions as well.
Furthermore, the ACLU complained that the overwhelming majority of North Carolina counties do not have an abortionist operating within them.
“The prohibition of qualified advanced practice clinicians providing medication abortion is completely arbitrary, medically unnecessary, and profoundly limits access to abortion in North Carolina,” Anne Logan Bass, a nurse-practitioner at Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, said in the press release. “Certified nurse midwives and nurse practitioners like myself are highly trained medical professionals who are qualified to provide this care and already do in other states — just not in North Carolina. Today, we are asking the court to help alleviate this health crisis by removing an unnecessary barrier to care so that more North Carolinians can access a full range of reproductive health services, including time-sensitive abortion care, in their own state.”
North Carolina is by no means the first state to receive pressure from the abortion industry to allow non-physicians to commit abortions. But far from being an arbitrary, unjust, and political requirement, there are specific reasons non-physicians are not permitted to take the lives of preborn children.
According to a 2013 study from the Ryan Residency abortion training program at the University of California San Francisco, abortions committed by non-physicians are more likely to end in complications than those committed by physicians — meaning this push from the abortion industry puts women’s lives at risk.
With first-trimester aspiration abortions, the most common complication was incomplete abortions, meaning parts of the preborn baby were left inside the mother’s body, which can lead to life-threatening infection and death. And while the abortion industry would likely claim that this isn’t an issue in North Carolina, as non-physicians would only be committing chemical abortions, the abortion pill has been found to be four times more dangerous than first trimester surgical abortions and increases in its rate of incomplete abortions as gestation progresses.
North Carolina legislators need to realize that allowing non-physicians to commit abortions doesn’t benefit women; it only puts them at even higher risk while ensuring the abortion industry increases its profits.
