Skip to content
Center for Reproductive Rights
Center for Reproductive Rights

Primary Menu

  • About
    • Overview
    • The Center’s Impact
    • Center Leadership & Staff
    • Annual Reports
    • Corporate Engagement
    • Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
    • Careers
    • Contact Us
  • Work
    • Overview
    • Litigation
    • Legal Policy and Advocacy
    • Resources & Research
    • Recent Case Highlights
    • Landmark Cases
    • Cases Archive
    • World’s Abortion Laws Map
    • After Roe Fell: Abortion Laws by State
  • Issues
    • Overview
    • Abortion
    • Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
    • Assisted Reproduction
    • Contraception
    • Humanitarian Settings
    • Maternal Health
    • COVID-19
  • Regions
    • Overview
    • Global Advocacy
    • Africa
    • Asia
    • Europe
    • Latin America and the Caribbean
    • United States
  • News
    • Latest News
    • Stories
    • Events
    • Center in the Spotlight
    • Press Releases
    • Statements
    • Press Room
    • Newsletters
  • Resources
    • Resources & Research
    • U.S. Abortion Rights: Resources
    • Maps
    • World Abortion Laws Map
    • After Roe Fell: Abortion Laws by State
    • Repro Red Flags: Agency Watch
  • Act
    • Overview
    • Give
    • Act
    • Learn
  • Donate
    • Become a Monthly Donor
    • Make a Donor Advised Fund Gift
    • Leave a Legacy Gift
    • Donate Gifts of Stock
    • Give a Gift in Honor
    • Attend an Event
    • Employee Matching Gifts
    • Mail a Check
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
Donate
icon-hamburger icon-magnifying-glass Donate
icon-magnifying-glass-teal

Virginia Health Care Providers File New Lawsuit Challenging Longstanding Abortion Restrictions

Center for Reproductive Rights - Center for Reproductive Rights - search logo
search Close Close icon
Center for Reproductive Rights -
Menu Close Menu Close icon
Donate

Primary Menu

  • About
    • Overview
    • The Center’s Impact
    • Center Leadership & Staff
    • Annual Reports
    • Corporate Engagement
    • Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
    • Careers
    • Contact Us
  • Work
    • Overview
    • Litigation
    • Legal Policy and Advocacy
    • Resources & Research
    • Recent Case Highlights
    • Landmark Cases
    • Cases Archive
    • World’s Abortion Laws Map
    • After Roe Fell: Abortion Laws by State
  • Issues
    • Overview
    • Abortion
    • Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
    • Assisted Reproduction
    • Contraception
    • Humanitarian Settings
    • Maternal Health
    • COVID-19
  • Regions
    • Overview
    • Global Advocacy
    • Africa
    • Asia
    • Europe
    • Latin America and the Caribbean
    • United States
  • News
    • Latest News
    • Stories
    • Events
    • Center in the Spotlight
    • Press Releases
    • Statements
    • Press Room
    • Newsletters
  • Resources
    • Resources & Research
    • U.S. Abortion Rights: Resources
    • Maps
    • World Abortion Laws Map
    • After Roe Fell: Abortion Laws by State
    • Repro Red Flags: Agency Watch
  • Act
    • Overview
    • Give
    • Act
    • Learn
  • Donate
    • Become a Monthly Donor
    • Make a Donor Advised Fund Gift
    • Leave a Legacy Gift
    • Donate Gifts of Stock
    • Give a Gift in Honor
    • Attend an Event
    • Employee Matching Gifts
    • Mail a Check
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn

Related Content

Issues:

Abortion, Legal Protections

Regions:

United States

Work:

In the Courts, Engaging Policymakers, In the States (USA)

Type:

News, Press Releases

Case Archive

For updates on Center cases, explore our case archive here.

Follow the Center

Donate Now

Join Now

06.20.2018

In the Courts Abortion United States News

Virginia Health Care Providers File New Lawsuit Challenging Longstanding Abortion Restrictions

Justin Goldberg

Share

  • facebook
  • Twitter
  • linkedin
  • Email id
Virginia Health Care Providers File New Lawsuit Challenging Longstanding Abortion Restrictions
Lawsuit brought by health care providers challenges abortion restrictions in the Commonwealth of Virginia — some of which have been on the books for over 40 years.

(PRESS RELEASE) — Today, a group of health care providers in Virginia announced a legal challenge to protect and expand access to safe, legal abortion. The lawsuit seeks to overturn several core components of the longstanding, unconstitutional abortion restrictions on the books in Virginia. These laws needlessly target abortion providers and harm patients seeking abortion services by imposing burdensome and medically unnecessary requirements. The laws restrict who may provide abortion care and how they provide it, and place onerous, unnecessary obstacles in the way of Virginians seeking abortion care.



Health care providers including Falls Church Healthcare Center, Whole Woman’s Health of Charlottesville, A Capital Women’s Health Clinic, and the Virginia League for Planned Parenthood are working together with allies and supporters statewide to fight on all fronts to ensure every person can access the care they need.  The providers filed suit to overturn the layers of interlocking restrictions that single out abortion care and make it increasingly difficult — and sometimes impossible — for Virginians who have decided to end a pregnancy to get the safe, legal, high-quality care they need. 



Reproductive rights advocates are using the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2016 ruling in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt to proactively challenge Virginia’s decades-old restrictions. The Whole Woman’s Health standard reaffirms a woman’s fundamental right to access abortion and declares that medically unnecessary laws that impose burdens on individuals are simply unconstitutional.   



The lawsuit challenges these unconstitutional laws in federal district court and is brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights and Planned Parenthood Federation of America.



The restrictions challenged in the lawsuit include:




  • Licensing Scheme: An extensive, onerous licensing scheme that applies only to medical facilities that provide five or more first trimester abortions per month, targeting abortion providers for stringent licensure requirements that have no legitimate medical basis.

  • Second Trimester Hospital Requirement: A medically unnecessary and outdated law requiring any second trimester abortion to be performed in a hospital, despite no scientific evidence that these restrictive building requirements make abortion any safer than when performed in a medical office.   

  • Physician-Only Law: A law preventing highly qualified advanced practice clinicians such as Licensed Nurse Practitioners and Certified Nurse Midwives from providing abortion care, despite their post-graduate training, extensive clinical experience, and scientific evidence that such clinicians perform the procedure safely and effectively.

  • Two-Trip Mandatory Delay Law: A law forcing patients to undergo an ultrasound and listen to information that serves no purpose, plus the offering of materials containing irrelevant, misleading, and false statements 24 hours before an abortion, which collectively require each patient to make two trips to a facility and delay their care.

  • Criminalization Laws: In conjunction with the other laws, statutes that treat abortion as a crime instead of a common, safe, and legal medical procedure.



“My Center, Falls Church Healthcare and my fellow Virginia abortion providers and the patients we serve deserve better. Enough is enough: We have endured an onslaught of abortion restrictions for decades, that placed complex, invasive and medically unjustified restrictions on our dear patients’ most fundamental rights,” said Rosemary Codding, Founder and Director of the Falls Church Healthcare Center. “It is time for us to unite and work together to get these outdated and medically unnecessary laws off the books so that Virginians can exercise their God-given rights to self-determination, so they can make their own health care decisions. Falls Church is determined to help them enjoy their rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution.”



“Whole Woman’s Health of Charlottesville is thrilled to join forces with our Virginia provider colleagues to fight for access to quality abortion care without a maze of obstacles,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, President of Whole Woman’s Health Alliance. “The Whole Woman’s Health Supreme Court victory from 2016 was game-changing—affirming that abortion laws must be based on medical evidence. We’re using this new standard to affirmatively strike at the core of the Commonwealth’s burdensome restrictions, some dating back decades, that are based on ideology, not health or science.”



“Here in Virginia, we have been up against a regime of restrictions that make it harder for patients to access safe and legal abortion. Today, I stand with my partners to support and defend individuals seeking reproductive health services on the ground, day to day, and face to face,” said Shelley Abrams, Executive Director of A Capital Women’s Health Clinic. “We’re ready to continue the fight, ensuring the constitutional right to abortion is protected and providers have the ability to offer safe, legal abortion because Virginians deserve better.”



“As a physician who dedicates my career to the health and well-being of women, I know firsthand just how difficult these medically unnecessary laws are on patients in need of care. In fact, women seeking a safe, legal abortion after the first trimester have only two health center options in the state because of medically unnecessary restrictions. Limiting women’s access to only two medical facilities only creates more burdens and delays care. As a result, some women are unable to access safe, legal abortion at all because of loss of income from time off work, or cost for child care or travel.  It’s time to strike these laws down once and for all and focus on shaping policies that expand access to reproductive health care including safe, legal abortion,” said Dr. Shanthi Ramesh, Medical Director, Virginia League for Planned Parenthood.



“The laws we are challenging today are shutting down clinics, delaying care, increasing costs, and piling one burden on top of another in an attempt to regulate the fundamental protections of Roe v. Wade out of existence,” said Nancy Northup, President and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights.



“Today’s lawsuit is the next step in the fight forward for people’s health and rights, including safe, legal abortion. We’ve seen a groundswell of organizing and mobilizing nationwide that’s creating real change. Take a look at Virginia. Already, working alongside lawmakers, grassroots activists, and our fellow advocacy groups, we fought and won Medicaid expansion for 400,000 Virginians and increased access to affordable birth control. Now, we’re fighting in the courtroom, because every person deserves the freedom and opportunity to access health care, including safe and legal abortion.” said Helene Krasnoff, Vice President of Public Policy Litigation &, Law, Planned Parenthood Federation of America.



Between 2009 and 2016, the number of medical facilities providing abortion care declined by more than half—making it progressively more difficult and expensive for people seeking abortions to access care. Over 92 percent of Virginia cities or counties have no abortion provider, and the remaining facilities are clustered in five urban areas—leaving large swaths of the state with no access.



This challenge was filed by Jenny Ma, Gail Deady, and Amy Myrick from the Center for Reproductive Rights, Jennifer Sandman of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and local counsel Claire Gastañaga from the ACLU of Virginia. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on behalf of Plaintiffs.



 



###


Related Posts

Azar v. Garza Amicus Brief

Abortion,United States,In the Courts

Complaint: Falls Church Healthcare Center et al. v. Norman Oliver et al.

Abortion,United States,In the Courts

Amicus Brief: State of California et al. v. Alex M. Azar et al.

Other Barriers, Contraception,United States,In the Courts

Sign up for email updates.

The most up-to-date news on reproductive rights, delivered straight to you.

Footer Menu

  • Careers
  • Privacy Policy
  • Gift Acceptance Policy
  • Contact Us

Center for Reproductive Rights
© (1992-2024)

Use of this site signifies agreement with our disclaimer and privacy policy.

Better Business Bureau Charity Watch Top Rated Center for Reproductive Rights
This site uses necessary, analytics and social media cookies to improve your experience and deliver targeted advertising. Click "Options" or click here to learn more and customize your cookie settings, otherwise please click "Accept" to proceed.
OPTIONSACCEPT
Manage consent

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Functional
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytics
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
CookieDurationDescription
_ga2 yearsThis cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors.
_gat_UA-6619340-11 minuteNo description
_gid1 dayThis cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form.
_parsely_session30 minutesThis cookie is used to track the behavior of a user within the current session.
HotJar: _hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress30 minutesNo description
HotJar: _hjFirstSeen30 minutesNo description
HotJar: _hjid1 yearThis cookie is set by Hotjar. This cookie is set when the customer first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the random user ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behavior in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID.
HotJar: _hjIncludedInPageviewSample2 minutesNo description
HotJar: _hjIncludedInSessionSample2 minutesNo description
HotJar: _hjTLDTestsessionNo description
SSCVER1 year 24 daysThe domain of this cookie is owned by Nielsen. The cookie is used for online advertising by creating user profile based on their preferences.
Advertisement
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
CookieDurationDescription
_fbp3 monthsThis cookie is set by Facebook to deliver advertisement when they are on Facebook or a digital platform powered by Facebook advertising after visiting this website.
fr3 monthsThe cookie is set by Facebook to show relevant advertisments to the users and measure and improve the advertisements. The cookie also tracks the behavior of the user across the web on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin.
IDE1 year 24 daysUsed by Google DoubleClick and stores information about how the user uses the website and any other advertisement before visiting the website. This is used to present users with ads that are relevant to them according to the user profile.
IMRID1 year 24 daysThe domain of this cookie is owned by Nielsen. The cookie is used for storing the start and end of the user session for nielsen statistics. It helps in consumer profiling for online advertising.
personalization_id2 yearsThis cookie is set by twitter.com. It is used integrate the sharing features of this social media. It also stores information about how the user uses the website for tracking and targeting.
TDID1 yearThe cookie is set by CloudFare service to store a unique ID to identify a returning users device which then is used for targeted advertising.
test_cookie15 minutesThis cookie is set by doubleclick.net. The purpose of the cookie is to determine if the user's browser supports cookies.
Others
Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet.
CookieDurationDescription
adEdition1 dayNo description
akaas_MSNBC10 daysNo description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional1 yearThe cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others1 yearNo description
geoEdition1 dayNo description
next-i18next1 yearNo description
SAVE & ACCEPT
Powered by CookieYes Logo
Scroll Up