AG Politicizing the Abortion Regulation Process

December 9, 2011

Members of the Virginia Coalition to Protect Women's Health, which ProgressVA supports, are speaking out against draft abortion regulations today at the State Board of Health meeting in Richmond. The Coalition reports, "a new AP investigation published last weekend revealed opposition to the final abortion regulations proposed to the Board of Health by members of the state's own medical committee appointed to develop the draft regulations.... The more than 1,700 pages of FOIA documents reveal that the Attorney General's office intervened in the regulation drafting process to impose medically irrelevant requirements rejected by the Department of Health's appointed medical committee."

Progressive Point: Virginians rely on their Attorney General to defend the laws of the Commonwealth and ensure the pursuit of justice. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has abused this trust by using his office to promote conservative ideology on the regulatory processes of the Commonwealth. Cuccinelli was caught in a brazen attempt to restrict, and effectively end, a women's right to choose--a decision that must between a women, her family, and her faith--by using his office's influence to impose medically irrelevant requirements on women's health centers.

Cuccinelli's ideological interference threatens women's health, restricting access to affordable, comprehensive reproductive health care. Like the Virginia Coalition to Protect Women's Health today, we all must speak out and stand up to politicians like Cuccinelli who use their office to force the imposition of personal beliefs at the expense of our rights and health.

Get the Facts: Via the Virginia Coalition to Protect Women's Health:

• "Last spring, state legislators passed a law that allowed for the promulgation of temporary abortion regulations. These regulations single out women's health centers as part of an unprecedented political campaign to undermine women's access to safe, legal reproductive health care services."

• "According to the AP article and evident in the FOIA documents, the recommendations that the medical committee and Department of Health developed together were quite different than what the Department of Health ended up releasing, and it appears that the committee's recommendations would have likely enabled most health centers to remain open."

• "As a result of the politicization of the process, unless amended, women's health care centers would have to come into compliance with the architectural requirements temporarily and then be forced to comply with potentially different architectural requirements shortly thereafter through the permanent regulatory process that will begin next year."

• "Even health centers that only provide oral medication abortion would be forced to overhaul buildings for medically unnecessary reasons."

Tweet it: Cuccinelli's priorities: ideology over women's access to health care services http://bit.ly/v52QSJ via @ProgressVA

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