No, social workers would not be “protected from prosecution for dispensing RU-486”, because social workers are not authorized to dispense RU-486 or even obtain RU-486 without a prescription from a physician. Social workers do not have prescription-writing authority, and federal law requires that RU-486 be provided under the supervision of a physician, and there are additional specific requirements for the physician’s qualifications before the law allows him/her to provide RU-486.
The morning after pill is not RU-486. The morning after pill, or “Plan B”, is available without a prescription to women age 18 or older. There are many situations where a social worker is given authority to provide non-prescription medications to a minor. There are likely some specific situations where a social worker — with or without this bill being passed — is allowed to provide the morning after pill to a minor, probably a minor who is already in state custody and will also be getting physician care via the state. This is hardly the same as social workers “being allowed to perform abortions”. YOU may regard it as “performing an abortion”, but it is not regarded as such by the laws of the land, nor by the medical profession which defines abortion as a termination of an established pregnancy, in other words, post-implantaion.
So the claim that the bill would allow social workers to perform abortions is patently false. If you bother to read the text of the bill, there is no mention whatsoever of social workers.
You, I know, are aware that Plan B can cause a spontaneous miscarriage of an early implanted embryo. That is an abortifacient effect, hence social workers will be immune from prosecution for dispensing plan B to a minor and therefore immune from prosecution for aborting a minor’s pregnancy. Michelle Malkin is more likely to be right than you are, GS. Plan B is a single dose regimen (which social workers can give out) whereas RU 486 is a two drug regimen, one to shrink the uterine lining blood supply and the other to cause shedding of the uterine lining which may or may not be sustaining an emplanted embryonic aged human being. As to dispensing without a medical license, well, abortuaries aren’t supposed to operate outside of ‘sterile OR procedures either, but they do in too many cases because there is no operational oversight of the slaughterhouses. The dispensing of RU 486 will get the same ignoring if this legislation goes into effect, count on it.