Virginia’s assault on abortion claims a victim
By Editorial Board, Published: April 26
AT ABORTION clinics, the presence of awnings, the width of doorways and the dimensions of janitorial closets have little to do with the health of patients. But by requiring that Virginia’s 20 abortion clinics conform to strict licensing standards designed for new hospitals, the state has ensured that many or most of them will be driven out of business in the coming months.
Just days after the state Board of Health approved the regulationsthis month, under pressure from Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R), they claimed their first victim. Hillcrest Clinic in Norfolk, which for 40 years had provided reproductive health services, including abortions, closed last weekend.
Hillcrest was partly a victim of its own success in providing women with ready access to birth control. Like most other clinics around the state, it saw demand for abortions dwindle as more women took advantage of options to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
Still, even after years of protests, arson, a pipe bombing and an attack by a man wielding a semiautomatic weapon, Hillcrest performed more than 1,600 abortions last year, about 7 percent of the state total. The principal reason it closed its doors was that complying with the regulations would have saddled it with $500,000 in renovations — an unaffordable expense.
That’s precisely what Mr. Cuccinelli and other advocates of the policy intended. According to a survey by the state Health Department, just one of the 19 surviving clinics meets the requirements. Fifteen of the remaining facilities estimated their combined costs of compliance at $14.5?million.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/virginias-abortion-assault-claims-a-victim/2013/04/26/88f152f2-ad22-11e2-a8b9-2a63d75b5459_story.html
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How many years before the reports of deaths from botched abortions start appearing in the Virginia press?
From the Orlando Women's Center; found by search on 'botched abortion statistics':
Approximately 25% of the world population lives in countries with highly restrictive abortion laws, mostly in Asia, Africa and Latin America
One woman dies every 7 minutes around the world due to an unsafe illegal abortion. Women who undergo illegal abortions are those who are very poor and do not have access to family planning facilities for education and prevention of unwanted pregnancies
Making abortion illegal or legal has no effect on the total number of abortions performed in the world. Making abortion legal dramatically reduces maternal morbidity and mortality.
(NB: The Phil Ochs' lyric used as the title to the reply comes from a different context, but it was the thought that occurred to me immediately while reading the post. And not such a different context, really. Another story of needless, senseless death repeated again, and again, and again, and again.)
Thanks for the post, n2doc.
