The parade of anti-abortion legislation continues unabated. Progress came yesterday on a three-day waiting period, up from two, for women seeking abortion and a bill to direct women to Google up information on the scientifically dubious proposition that the two-pill medicine abortion used in the early stages of pregnancy can be “reversed.” Today, the latest roadblock headed for an affirmative vote would reduce the number of doctors who may prescribe the abortion pill.

SB 448, which has passed the Senate, is on the agenda of a House committee today and likely will receive the usual salute anti-abortion bills get in the legislature (multiple polls indicating continued majority support for preservation of abortion rights notwithstanding). This little ol‘ bill says a doctor must be board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology to perform an abortion — including to prescribe a two-pill regimen that induces a miscarriage in the first eight weeks of pregnancy. It’s a safer procedure than childbirth, which you need not even be a medical doctor to assist in Arkansas. Here’s a fact sheet on all the things wrong with this bill, as if facts matter.

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Irony alert: The legislature is poised to let optometrists rather than a medical doctor slice up your eyeballs. It is rapidly expanding the types of medicines and shots pharmacists can pass out without seeing a medical doctor. Nurses? More medical practice is in the cards for them at the legislature. But let a trained and licensed physician prescribe a pill for a purpose that’s legal but which the Arkansas legislature opposes? Not going to happen.

Just remember. None of this is about safe-guarding the wellbeing of a woman. Quite the opposite in effect.

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