Restricting access to women's health

June 7, 2012

As we reported earlier today, "Thanks to legislation passed by anti-choice lawmakers, the Virginia Board of Health is considering making permanent regulations that would restrict women's access to reproductive health care. They would force health clinics to meet burdensome and unnecessary requirements."

Progressive Point: Governor McDonnell and his conservative allies are continuing their campaign to take away women's control over their own bodies. Next week, the Virginia Board of Health will vote on just that--moving forward with permanent regulations of women's health centers designed to limit access to reproductive health care.

Virginia's women's health centers provide vital health care services like STD screenings, cancer screenings and family planning services, in addition to providing legal and safe abortions. The results will disproportionately affect young, low-income, uninsured, and minority women by further reducing their health care options. Burdening their operations with medically unnecessary regulations is a thinly veiled attempt to restrict access to these important women's health services.

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."

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