Richmond Times-Dispatch: Virginia’s controversy continues

Last month, the Virginia Board of Health rightfully honored its mission to promote and protect the health of all Virginians, rejecting an unnecessary regulation for reproductive health care providers that would have forced nearly all the state’s existing clinics that provide abortion services to either rebuild from the ground up or close. But despite this reasonable and common-sense approach, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli — who are by no means medical experts — continue to interfere and force the Board of Health to advance regulations that undermine Virginia women’s rights and health. The controversy began last summer, when the governor and the attorney general pushed through “emergency regulations” that would have forced existing reproductive health clinics that provide abortion services to come into compliance with standards for newly constructed hospitals by 2013. The problem? There’s absolutely no medical reason for this requirement. The Virginia Board of Health’s advisory panel recognized this when it recommended its own regulations last year, which did not include the new construction standards that Virginia’s executive branch is pushing on reproductive health care providers. At a heated public meeting in June, the board refused to impose this ill-advised and draconian measure on existing clinics, amending the regulation to remove the new construction standards. A member of the attorney general’s staff tried to pressure members to fall in line, continuing the office’s full-court press against the members of the board by attempting to persuade them during a lunch break to change their votes on the amendment. The attorney general’s office failed, and the amendment stands — but then, Cuccinelli tried yet another underhanded tactic by refusing to “certify” the regulations that the Board of Health passed. The board must now reconsider its action. Throughout this process, it has become abundantly clear that Virginia’s executive branch is motivated not by concerns about health, but rather by a desire to make it impossible for doctors to provide the full range of reproductive health care. We’ve seen this in many other states across the country where politicians hostile to women’s constitutional right to reproductive choice are bent on regulating it out of existence. And make no mistake about it: Reproductive health care providers are the only medical professionals who are being subjected to this bullying campaign. Not a single other type of health care facility in Virginia has been forced to rebuild in compliance with the new hospital construction standards that the governor and attorney general are trying to impose on abortion clinics. In fact, a urologist testified in last month’s hearing that he routinely performs surgeries more complicated than abortion in his office-based practice, yet he has not been subjected to such harsh regulations. For some reason, the governor and attorney general seem dramatically less concerned about the health of these patients. Physicians, reproductive rights advocates, opponents of governmental overreach, and Virginia’s own panel of medical experts have all raised their voices to call out this hypocrisy — and they are far from alone. State and federal courts across the country — including, most recently, Missouri and Kansas — have moved to block comparably extreme abortion regulations from taking effect. In issuing the temporary restraining order that has kept the Kansas regulations from being enforced since last November, the state judge wrote that by forcing reproductive health care providers to shut down, it would “cause irreparable harm” to women seeking abortion services. The reproductive health care providers that Virginia’s executive branch insists on singling out have been safely caring for women in Virginia for decades, providing a range of vital reproductive and family health services of which abortion care is but one part. It is an important one: One in three American women will end a pregnancy at some point in their lives, and we need look no further than the dark days preceding Roe v. Wade to grasp the horrific consequences that women bear when safe and legal abortion services are unavailable. It is for this reason that these relentless attacks on abortion providers must be regarded as an attack on women’s health itself. And it is time for McDonnell and Cuccinelli to end their crusade to trample the rights of women and their doctors, and to allow the Virginia Board of Health — and critical health care providers statewide — to do the important work that Virginians have entrusted them to do.

Read and comment on this article on the Richmond Times-Dispatch website >,