by Dr. Donna Harrison, M.D., FACOG, is Executive Director of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (www.aaplog.org).
We trained for 4 years of medical school, and 4 years of residency in obstetrics and gynecology in order to provide the best surgical care for our patients. During that time we learned by instruction and experience the skills necessary to avoid major surgical complications. We learned to respect the large blood vessels of the pregnant uterus, and learned how quickly they can bleed when injured. This experience gained over time and intense training translates into surgical skills that save women’s lives. And the lives of their unborn children.
But as obstetricians strive for excellence in caring for women and their unborn children, the abortion industry strives for any warm bodies with some state licensure willing to do abortions. And the abortion industry is turning from physicians to seducing other sources of abortion providers.
“Providing Abortion Care: A Professional Toolkit for Nurse- Midwives, Nurse Practitioners, and Physician Assistants (APC Toolkit) is for APCs who would like to advance their existing practice, as well as for those who are experienced in abortion care. The APC Toolkit presents abortion as a scope of practice issue and examines the provision of abortion care as a natural extension of the work of APCs.
It is a joint effort of Bixby Center, Abortion Access Project and NAF.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Certified nurse-midwives (CNMs), nurse practitioners (NPs), and physician assistants (PAs), collectively referred to in this document as advanced practice clinicians (APCs), are recognized and regulated providers of health care to millions of women in the United States. Some of these clinicians are enabled to provide safe, compassionate abortion care as part of their reproductive health and primary care practices. However, outdated laws, restrictive regulations, lack of clinical training opportunities, and politically-motivated challenges impede many other clinicians’ abilities to provide abortion care as a component of the full range of needed reproductive health care services. In states across the country, APCs, physicians, reproductive rights advocates, and attorneys have joined together to promote the provision of abortion by APCs, to protect both women’s access to abortion and
Read more about the push for non physician surgical abortion: Primary Care Initiative website and the website for Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health including the HWPP Project—a training and evaluation project for certified nurse-midwives, nurse practitioners and physician assistants in early aspiration abortion. (More information available here and here)
The obvious question is who is going to handle the cervical lacerations, the uterine perforations, the hemorrhages, the bowel perforations and the other complications that are going to arise from the performance of surgery by persons untrained in surgery?
Surgical decision-making requires a high level of experience and expertise. It is exactly the training, experience and expertise which distinguishes a physician from a mid-level provider.
For all the lip service given to “women’s health” this move by the abortion industry to push midlevel providers into the performance of surgery represents a massive degradation of safety standards so important to safeguarding a woman’s health and future reproduction.
The immediate past President of AAPLOG, Dr. Mary Davenport, testified multiple times before the California legislature warning of the dangers of allowing non-surgically trained personnel to provide abortions.
And AAPLOG members will continue to speak out against the dangerous practice of non-surgeons performing surgery. If you would like to help in testifying against this practice, which will soon be introduced in your state, or a state near you, please email us at prolifeob@gmail.com.
