Thanks to the efforts of conservatives who got elected based on lying to the electorate about knowing how to do stuff like “create jobs” and “fix the economy” (LOL), it’s been a generation since getting an abortion was this big a pain in the ass — albeit not as big a pain in the ass as carrying a pregnancy for 9 months, then pushing a human infant out of your vaginal canal, then either raising the child at enormous cost with very little assistance from the government or society at large OR giving it up for adoption and spending the rest of your life wondering about it — BUT I DIGRESS. Point is, while other states are enacting barriers to choice, one state is actually making it easier for women to access abortion — California.
Governor Jerry Brown just signed the Early Access to Abortion Bill into law. The new legislation will allow some medical professionals — nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives, and physician’s assistants — to perform certain types of early abortions. Previously, the law mandated that these relatively simple procedures be performed by a doctor.
To paraphrase Martha Stewart, this is A Good Thing; it means that doctor scarcity won’t be a de facto barrier to terminating a pregnancy, which means less desperation, which means more safety. California’s new law will also ideally prevent another horrifying Gosnell-type scenario. As Irin Carmon at MSNBC explains,
Women who went to Gosnell, sometimes repeatedly and usually without complaint, plainly felt they had no other choice. They were predominately low-income and women of color–the same groups that will be the likeliest to benefit from California’s law, since research shows that they are more likely to see nurse practitioners or physician assistants than obstetricians and gynecologists.
Some women also ended up at Gosnell’s clinic because they were too far along for another provider or for Pennsylvania’s legal limit. There is some research indicating that some of the later abortions that politicians like to rail against are preventable–if women were able to access abortion earlier.
Makes sense. And good for California women.