What you don’t know can’t hurt you, right? Well, in this case, it can.
The University of California San Francisco/Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health is conducting a taxpayer-funded program training non-physicians to perform first-trimester vacuum aspiration surgical abortions. This program is secretive; the court has denied a petition from the Life Legal Defense Foundation asking that information important to the program – such as who donated the millions of dollars to fund it – be revealed, and that the names of those involved be released. Will the woman who lies on the table even know if the surgeon looming over her, holding the instruments of abortion, is a licensed doctor or not?
That sounds scary enough…but these non-physician abortionists are performing abortions after two to five days of training.
As Dana Cody, executive director of the Life Legal Defense Foundation, says, “[e]ven licensed hair stylists get more education time.” Cody expresses concern as to where the money funding this program is coming from: “There’s a $3.5-million grant, and we don’t know who the money is from. Then there’s other funding from the taxpayers.”
Cody also states that the program’s own documents show that injury rate is 80 percent higher when non-physicians perform abortions than when the abortion is performed by a doctor.
And remember, this program is funded by California taxpayer dollars.