The Arizona State Board of Nursing’s unprecedented approval is deeply disturbing to Deborah Sheasby, legal counsel at the Center for Arizona Policy.

“It’s the first state that is in the country to actually issue an official opinion that this is an appropriate procedure for nurse practitioners to perform.”

Sheasby spoke at the panel’s hearing, telling members the decision goes against current Arizona law, and statutes in more than 40 other states.  She also pointed-out nurse practitioners aren’t trained to do abortions

“That they haven’t established that there are good training programs that there are ways to establish competence in the procedure.”

Dr. Michael Urig is a pro-life O B – G Y N. He has several nurse practitioners on his staff.

“They did not know of, and I did not know of, any kind of specialty training for anyone but physicians to do that procedure.” 

He says the board’s swift vote is distressing because safety issues are being ignored.

“I don’t think it can be regulated if any nurse practitioner can be doing this. And specifically unsupervised.//And the issues are the complications that can come from it that there’s no way a nurse practitioner has the training in that area.”

“There’s numerous procedures that are done by gynecologists and there’s no restriction by what their wording is//that they can start doing any type of procedure that gynecologists do.”

In the same session the panel also decided disciplinary action is unnecessary against the nurse practitioner working for Planned Parenthood.