Arizona Nursing Board Committee Recommends Allowing Nurses To Perform First-Trimester Abortions

Main Category: Abortion
Also Included In: Nursing / Midwifery
Article Date: 13 May 2008 - 7:00 PDT

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The Arizona Board of Nursing's Advance Practice Committee has voted unanimously to recommend that nurse practitioners be allowed to perform first-trimester abortions in the state, the Arizona Daily Star reports. The full nursing board is scheduled to vote on the recommendation on Wednesday. According to the Star, the recommendation "will only add fuel" to legislative efforts aimed at overriding the nursing board and permitting only doctors to perform abortions in the state. The House recently voted 32-28 to pass a bill (HB 2269) that would prohibit all nurses from performing surgical abortions (Fischer, Arizona Daily Star, 5/9).

Although state law regulates nursing, there are no rules specifically addressing which types of practitioners can perform abortions. Rules state that nurse practitioners are entitled to perform therapeutic procedures that they are qualified to conduct.

The bill was spurred by a complaint filed in June 2007 with the Board of Nursing against Mary Andrews, a nurse practitioner with Planned Parenthood Arizona. The board considered the issue in November 2007 but did not reach a decision. Michelle Steinberg, a spokesperson for PPAZ, said her organization has been using a nurse practitioner to conduct abortions for eight years "with fewer complications than the national average" (Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 3/7).

Steinberg said, "There are a large number of women in Tucson who need to access services," adding, "That doesn't necessarily mean it has to be a physician." PPAZ attorney Lawrence Rosenfeld told the nursing board committee that Arizona law does not prohibit nurse practitioners from handling first-trimester abortions. Pam Lotke, a physician and professor at the University of Arizona, last week at a Advance Practices Committee hearing testified that the procedure used in first-term abortion -- which essentially vacuums out the fetus -- is considered extremely safe with few complications and that there is no reason that cannot be done by a properly trained nurse practitioner.

However, Cathi Herrod -- president of the Center for Arizona Policy, which has lobbied to ban all abortions -- said the current legislative proposal is about safety rather than restricting access to legal abortions. In a letter to the nursing board, she wrote that current abortion regulations in Arizona specifically refer to the procedure being performed by doctors and that nothing specifically permits nurse practitioners to perform the procedure (Arizona Daily Star, 5/9).

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