Press Release  May 6, 2002

Under the guise of an affirmation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision imposing liberal abortion laws on the fifty states, is a radical change in California abortion law, which will put women’s lives in jeopardy. SB 1301, which could be on the Senate floor as soon as Thursday, would remove the 35-year-old law that permits only "a holder of the physician’s and surgeon’s certificate" to perform abortions.

The Reproductive Privacy Act, which would replace the 1967 Therapeutic Abortion Act, is authored by Senator Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica). While it retains physician-only surgical abortions, it allows unnamed others (perhaps nurse-midwifes, nurse practitioners, etc.) to perform drug abortions if they hold a license or certificate "to perform or assist in performing the functions necessary for a nonsurgical abortion."

As recently as April 19, the federal Food and Drug Administration posted a letter on their website from Danco Laboratories, the manufacturer of RU 486, informing physicians that two women have died after RU 486 abortions, and one 21 year-old suffered cardiac arrest—a rare occurrence in a woman that age. The two who died suffered a bacterial infection in one case and a uterine rupture due to an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy in the other. Another near-fatal bacterial infection, and two additional uterine ruptures due to undiagnosed ectopic pregnancies prompted Danco and the FDA to release the warning and ask physicians to report any additional "adverse events."

Jan Carroll, Legislative Analyst for California ProLife, cautioned that "arguments by proponents of non-physician abortions that nurse midwives, nurse practitioners, etc., would still operate within their ‘scope of practice’ are disingenuous. Removing the law that bars non-physician abortions at once changes their scope of practice."

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