Virginia officials prepare to release draft abortion regulations

[alp227]

Source: The Washington Post

Virginia health officials are planning to release draft emergency regulations for abortion clinics as soon as Friday that reproductive-health activists say could impose strict physical, staffing and equipment requirements and could force many of the state’s clinics to close.

The General Assembly passed legislation this year mandating that Virginia’s abortion clinics be regulated like hospitals. Currently, they are treated like doctor’s offices.

Although clinic operators say they haven’t received specifics about the regulations, they say state health officials have told them that the rules are modeled on those adopted by South Carolina, which has some of the nation’s most-restrictive rules, activists said. Among the state’s 46 pages of requirements, for example, is one that says sinks must have hands-free faucets and others that govern air flow and temperature in clinics.

“These really have nothing to do with patients and everything to do with making it harder to provide abortion services,” said Elizabeth Nash, a public- policy analyst for the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit reproductive health research center that gathers the most comprehensive data on abortion in the United States.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/virginia-officials-prepare-to-release-draft-abortion-regulations/2011/08/25/gIQAHFoheJ_singlePage.html

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Meanwhile, Democratic governor of California Jerry Brown introduced his job creation strategy today. What's Bob McDonnell's? Hiring people to police women's reproductive choices?

[krispos42]

1. Yet, you try to get 46 pages of regulation on, say, handguns in Virginia

Oh, the wailing and gnashing of teeth.

[LiberalFighter]

2. How about shoving an unloaded firearm up the ass of those making the regulations?

[COLGATE4]

3. And when they release them as "drafts", the abortion providers

will be given 48 hours to bring the clinics into compliance or have to close. Lovely.

[Blue_Tires]

4. sad kick...