Prohibiting Montana nurses and midwives from aborting unborn babies is unconstitutional, a state judge declared Monday.
The Associated Press reports District Court Judge Mike Menahan issued a ruling in favor of Montana nurse practitioner Helen Weems and an unnamed nurse midwife who challenged a state law prohibiting them from doing abortions.
Menahan decided that the law limiting abortions to doctors and physician assistants is unconstitutional based on a 1999 Montana Supreme Court ruling, according to the report. That ruling found a so-called “right” to abort unborn babies in the state constitution based on the right to privacy.
Emilee Cantrell, spokeswoman for Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, slammed the ruling, saying abortionists’ financial interests are being prioritized above women’s safety. Cantrell told LifeNews that they will be appealing the ruling.
“Once again abortionists sued to lower the standard of care for Montana women in order to further their financial interests in performing as many abortions as possible,” Cantrell said. “We are reviewing the order to determine our next steps.”
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Knudsen also recently asked the state Supreme Court to overturn its 1999 pro-abortion ruling. The Planned Parenthood abortion chain is using the ruling to challenge three other state pro-life laws.
“All three laws unquestionably enhance the health and safety of Montana women,” Knudsen’s office argued in the case. “And they represent basic regulations of the practice of medicine—bread-and-butter exercises of [state government].But Planned Parenthood’s business is abortion, and these laws require modest changes to its business practices. So Plaintiffs asked the courts to do what they couldn’t through the legislative process—save them the trouble of providing better care to Montana women.”
Meanwhile, pro-abortion groups rejoiced at the news that medical workers with less training now may abort unborn babies in Montana.
“Today’s ruling comes at a perilous time for abortion rights, and it is a relief to pave the way for abortion access to be expanded in Montana, rather than further restricted,” said Hillary Schneller, an attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represented the nurse and midwife.
Weems also celebrated the ruling, saying nurse practitioners like herself are “safe, competent, legal providers of abortion.”
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.
The ruling Friday means nurse practitioners and nurse midwives may abort unborn babies in the first trimester either with abortion drugs or through the aspiration method, according to the AP.
An aspiration abortion involves a suction catheter being “inserted into the mother’s uterus to extract the preborn baby. Tools are then used to scrape the lining of the uterus to remove any remaining parts,” according to former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino.
The growing push to allow nurses to do abortions 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 partly because fewer doctors are willing to abort unborn babies. According to the pro-abortion 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 report.
