Assembly Bill 154 (Atkins) will address the current shortage of health care professionals able to provide early abortion care in California. It will authorize trained Nurse Practitioners (NPs), Certified Nurse Midwives (CNMs) and Physician Assistants (PAs) to provide comprehensive first trimester abortion care, which is within the scope of their licenses. Early abortion access is a critical public health issue. An estimated one in three women will decide to terminate a pregnancy by age 45, yet many women do not have sufficient access to early abortions because of the limited number of physicians providing the services in their communities. Almost half of the counties in California have no accessible abortion provider, requiring women to travel significant distances to terminate a pregnancy or wait for an appointment for services.
Assembly Bill 980 (Pan) will ease outdated building standards that have been uniquely applied to abortion clinics. Abortion clinics currently must adhere to higher building standards than primary care clinics - even though the risk of infection from taking a pill for a cold is no different from taking one to induce an abortion. Similarly, there is no difference in the possibility of infection between an aspiration abortion and other procedures that are regularly done in primary care clinics, such as insertion of an intrauterine device or endometrial biopsy.
The religious right has had no problem getting their supporters to inundate the Capitol with calls opposing both of these bills so it's imperative that committee members hear from us as well.
Please call the committee members NOW urging them to support both of these important bills.
Senator Hernandez (Chair) 916.651.4024
Senator Beall 916.651.4015
Senator de Leon 916.651.4022
Senator DeSaulnier 916.651.4007
Senator Monning 916.651.4017
Senator Pavley 916.651.4027
Senator Wolk 916.651.4003
And if you're in the Sacramento area, we could really use your support at the hearing to make sure committee members see a huge number of women standing in support of these bills.
The meeting will take place on Wednesday (July 3rd) at 1:30 PM at the Capitol in Room 4203.
We'll be there standing up for women and I hope to see many of you as well.
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