Barely a year after Hawaii began allowing nurses to abort first-trimester unborn babies, state lawmakers already are moving forward with legislation to allow nurses to do even more dangerous second-trimester abortions.
The Honolulu Civil Beat reports the state Senate Health Committee voted 4-1 on Friday to advance the abortion expansion bill. State Sen. Kurt Fevella, a Republican, cast the only opposing vote.
State Senate Bill 2282 would amend the 2021 law to allow advanced practice registered nurses to do aspiration and drug-induced abortions on unborn babies up to viability. Currently, the law limits nurses to doing first-trimester abortions.
Though the move would jeopardize women’s and unborn babies’ lives, its supporters claimed the abortion expansion is needed to help more women access abortions in Hawaii.
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“Even here in Hawaii, where we proudly support the right to abortion, too many meaningful people do not have access to care,” said Rachel Kuenzi, a policy analyst for the Planned Parenthood abortion chain, which supports the bill.
Hawaii appears to be the first state that may allow nurses to abort unborn babies after the first trimester. To protect women, most states require that abortions be done by licensed medical doctors. A 2013 study from the University of California San Francisco found that abortions done by non-physicians were twice as likely to have complications as those done by licensed physicians.
Despite the increased risks, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Virginia and Vermont all recently began allowing nurses and midwives to abort first-trimester unborn babies.
Last April, Hawaii joined them when Gov. David Ige signed a bill allowing advanced practice registered nurses to do first-trimester abortions with abortion drugs or by the surgical aspiration method.
Before the 2021 bill passed, Hawaii Life Alliance urged lawmakers to oppose it, testifying about the serious risks to women and girls as well as unborn babies.
“Vacuum aspiration is performed with a machine that uses a vacuum to suck the baby out of the uterus,” the pro-life organization told lawmakers at the time. “If women are going to choose to use this risky method where there are notable risks and complications, they need to be closely monitored and they need to have a licensed physician.”
Complications from aspiration abortions include cervical lacerations, uterine perforations and hemorrhaging.
“Expanding the number of people who can provide abortion will increase the number of unborn children being killed,” the pro-life organization stated.
The new bill, along with allowing nurses to do second-trimester abortions, also would strike out language referring to women and replace it with “pregnant persons” to include “transgender and gender nonbinary people.”
The legislation also would get rid of the jail time penalty for abortionists who violate the law. Instead, abortionists only could be punished with fines of up to $1,000 for violations.
Allowing nurses to abort unborn babies is one of the ways the abortion industry hopes to prop up its life-destroying business. Abortion rates are dropping and abortion clinics have been closing, in part, because fewer doctors are willing to abort unborn babies.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, in 1982, there were 2,918 abortion doctors practicing in America, but by 2011, there were only 1,720. A number of abortion clinics also have closed in the past few years because abortionists retired and no one was willing to take their places, according to a 2016 Bloomberg study.
ACTION ALERT: Submit testimony about the bill here. Contact Hawaii state lawmakers here.
