The Feminist Majority Foundation, a national non-profit organization based in Arlington, Virginia, is dedicated to women’s equality and reproductive health. We urge the Virginia State Board of Health to repeal 12 VAC 5-412. Far from ensuring patient safety, these regulations jeopardize women’s health by making it more difficult for women to access comprehensive reproductive healthcare, including safe and legal abortion.

12 VAC 5-412 imposes medically unnecessary, onerous restrictions on healthcare centers that provide abortion services, and has already caused multiple women’s health centers in the state to close. If the regulations are not repealed, additional health centers will close, cutting off women’s access to preventative and critical health care.

Restricted access to comprehensive reproductive healthcare services, including abortion, cancer screenings, and other preventive care, endangers women’s health, safety, and lives. In addition, low-income women are particularly affected by the closure of women’s healthcare centers and restricted access to care because they are more likely to rely on these facilities for health services.

The current regulations are the product of a politically motivated, flawed decision-making process. But, women’s health should not be determined by politics. 12 VAC 5-412 is not based on medical need, but on the desire of some politicians to control women’s medical care and use this issue to their own political advantage.

We urge the Board of Health to repeal and rewrite the current regulations of women’s health centers to ensure access to comprehensive reproductive health care.