NC clinic workers ask judges to allow more health professionals prescribe pills for abortions
with both Abortions in North Carolina And the number of out-of-state clinic patients soaring after the fall of Roe v. Wade, prosecutors wrote in a lawsuit Monday, judges should allow more trained health professionals to prescribe pills for drug-induced abortion.
Abortion providers, medical workers and an abortion rights group awaiting trial next year in their 2020 lawsuit against several state abortion rules have asked a three-judge panel to act now and block a law limiting who can provide such drugs from Some doctors are licensed only.
Allowing physician assistants, nurse practitioners and certified nurse midwives who work in certified abortion clinics to prescribe these pills would expand immediately. access to abortion In North Carolina, prosecutors said. These advanced practice physicians can already prescribe the same two drugs used in drug-induced abortions to manage a patient’s miscarriage, according to a memo describing the legal basis for the initial injunction.
Court should remove “unnecessary barrier to care so more North Carolinas can access the full range of reproductive health services, including time-sensitive abortion care, in their state,” Ann Logan Bass, nurse practitioner at Planned Parenthood South Ocean Atlantic, the plaintiff, in a press release.
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Abortion clinic operators in North Carolina said they have seen a marked increase in the number of women coming from other states that now have more severe abortion restrictions after US Supreme Court The decision is in June.
Workers at abortion clinics in North Carolina want more trained health professionals to be able to prescribe drug-induced abortion pills.
The memo said Planned Parenthood South Atlantic – a leading abortion provider and claimant – performed 1,298 abortions in September, which is a 68% increase compared to September 2021. In September 66% of abortion patients At its health center in Asheville — a short drive from parts of Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee — they were from out of state, compared to 31% in September 2021. Overall, 27% of abortion patients at Planned Parenthood health centers last month came from other states, Compared to 11% in the same month the previous year.
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The plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote that this “exacerbated the long waiting times for North Carolinas seeking abortions – forcing them to remain pregnant against their will for longer periods, possibly pushing them past the minimum gestational age for medical abortion, and more.”
North Carolina restricts abortion after 20 weeks, with some exceptions for medical emergencies. The state of Tennessee currently prohibits nearly all abortions. South Carolina and Georgia ban abortions once an ultrasound detects a fetus’s cardiac activity — usually six weeks after fertilization and before many patients know they’re pregnant. The South Carolina law was enforced briefly in the summer before the state Supreme Court suspended its implementation due to litigation.
The memo said waiting times between scheduling medical abortion appointments at Planned Parenthood health centers in Winston-Salem and Asheville and actual appointment dates have increased significantly since July. The court filing said that challenges in assigning doctors to six family planning health centers in the state that perform abortions mean that abortion appointments are not always available.
Republican Legislative Leaders Along with other government officials defending these and other abortion laws in the lawsuit, they will be able to respond to Monday’s request. A three-judge panel of the Supreme Court is considering the case because the lawsuit alleges that the impugned laws violate the state constitution. The trial date has been set for September 2023.
The lawsuit also challenges a 72-hour waiting period for a woman to obtain an abortion. ban hypothetical appointments to receive medication-induced abortion; Requirements approved in 2011 requiring the provision of certain information to a pregnant woman; Regulations placed on clinics, prosecutors say, prevent access to abortion.
