Midwives to perform abortions

State training midwives to perform abortions

Pilot project suspends rules to allow 'suction aspiration' procedures

A state senator in California is planning to start asking some hard questions after his staff uncovered a "pilot project" concealed within a gerontology program originally launched in 1973 that is being used to train nurse midwives and physicians assistants to perform "suction aspiration" surgical abortion procedures.

According to State Sen. Sam Annestad, a Republican from Grass Valley, the goal of the abortion program that carefully was concealed behind the description "expanding early pregnancy care" apparently is to train medical assistants to do abortions.

In a website commentary about his discoveries, Aanestad said it apparently was begun in 2006 without legislative oversight and involves the state and several foundations contributing financially to the "pilot program" at Planned Parenthood abortion businesses in three cities.

He said not only has the abortion-training program been concealed behind a "pregnancy care" label, state regulations have been suspended in order to allow "Nurse Midwives, Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants" to do procedures for which they would not ordinarily be considered qualified.

Aanestad said the effort is a perfect example of "Newspeak," the fictional language of George Orwell's twisted utopia in "1984."

"In California, Newspeak is now spoken fluently by those who seek to advance a political agenda in healthcare by avoiding scrutiny," he said. "Under the guise of 'access to primary care,' the Regents of the University of California have been conducting an experiment on women in Concord, Los Angeles and San Diego.

"Exploiting a pilot project program enacted in 1973 to address a gerontology workforce shortage, Healthcare Workforce Pilot Project (HWPP) #171 allows women seeking medical care to become subjects of social research," he said.

He said the experiment states it is to "demonstrate the role of advanced practice clinicians in expanding early pregnancy care."

"That's Orwellian for 'training non-physicians to perform first trimester abortions,'" he said.

Mitzi Sales, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood's business in Concord, told WND she is familiar with the program, which designed is to "increase women's access to safe reproductive health care."

She said the goal is to "integrate abortion care into current practice settings."

The program will, she said, "create more providers in a lot of the underserved areas that need them the most."

Sales said California has areas in which there are no fulltime abortion businesses available, so "providers" have to fly in. It is those areas, she said, the expansion in the number of "providers" would help.

Aanestad complained about such directed expansion of abortions.

"It is interesting, in the language of distortion, to note the population that is the focus of this public service," he said. "Though reporting that abortion rates have risen among poor and low-income women, the program sponsor at the University of California admits that the goal of the pilot project is to expand abortion practice and access, 'particularly in underserved areas.'

"The project director, an attorney, apparently believes that the underserved populations of California – overwhelmingly Latino and African-American – would benefit from even higher rates of abortion," he said.

The senator said, "At least this doublespeak is consistent with the stated goals of Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger: 'Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.'

"The sponsor of the 'surgical abortion by non-physicians' project, University of California, San Francisco's Bixby Center for Reproductive Health, must have missed the Newspeak memo about renaming abortion 'early pregnancy care.' They fund research called 'The Early Abortion Project,'" he said.

Aanestad told WND he was incensed by the program because of its misleading policy makers referencing "early pregnancy care" when in fact the program is for abortions.

"I'm on the health committee. I'm supposed to have a knowledge about this," he said.

He accused program organizers of being "deliberately misleading."

The second issue is the possible civil and criminal liability involved.

"I know very well that nurse midwives and nurse practitioners and physicians assistants do not get very much – if any – surgical training, certainly not in internal surgery or what we would call major surgery," Aanestad said. "For example, a midwife can't even use a forceps in a natural delivery.'

But this program is training those same individuals to invade a body organ where there can be complications of bleeding, perforations and other "disasters."

Aanestad said the program apparently is coming up for renewal in the next few weeks, and he'll be asking a lot of questions.

"My concern as a legislator ... is how [do we get from a gerontology program to] doing abortions on minority women?"

Aanestad said the pilot project applications reported a proposed cost of $1.3 million from UC San Francisco, Kaiser Permanente of Northern California, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, the John Merck Fund and the Educational Foundation of America.

"The taxpayers of California also foot the bill through the grant approval process and oversight provided by the state's Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development," he said.

"The ultimate goal of the project couldn't be clearer: 'Disseminate our abortion training and utilization model to other faculties and states interested in expanding the pool of primary care abortion providers,'" Aanestad said.

Karen England, who runs the California-based pro-family Capitol Resource Institute, said she was shocked.

"Under California law, only licensed physicians may perform surgical abortions," she said.

However, under the program, "abortionists have slipped in a program that teaches nurses, midwives and physician assistants to perform surgical abortions on women, particularly those in poor regions."

"This is stunning," England said. "Abortion activists are so intent on performing abortions that they are willing to deceive the public and defy government restrictions on their dangerous procedures."

Contact: Bob Unruh
Source: WorldNetDaily
Source URL: http://www.wnd.com
Publish Date: February 5, 2009
Link to this article:
http://www.ifrl.org/ifrl/news/090206_4.htm