The proposed regulations under consideration by the Board of Health are not based on medical necessity. The regulations have been developed by people who have a deep personal religious belief opposing abortion. Those advocating the regulations know that banning abortion outright is unconstitutional, so they have found other means of undermining the law.

These regulations are one example of this tactic.

Of course I state the obvious, but some of the testimony from the pubic attempts to justify the need for these new regulations through exaggerated examples of conditions inside clinics that provide abortion services. Many of those examples are from clinics outside of Virginia and have nothing to do with the clinics in our state. What will not be mentioned is the fact that the conditions legitimately reported at Virginia abortion clinics are no different than conditions reported at other ambulatory care centers in the state. 

The arguments of those advocating the regulations are constructed to distract us from the fact that these unnecessary proposed requirements are based upon religious bias against a woman's autonomy over her body. Our Constitution guarantees the freedom to practice a religion of one's choosing, but it does not allow one to impose that religious doctrine upon the entire population. 

When you allow religious doctrine to guide the regulatory process, you threaten the legitimacy of this board. I urge the Board of Health to defend the Constitution and strike down these medically unnecessary regulations which are based solely upon religious prejudice.