I am an OB-GYN practicing for three decades in Washington, DC and Northern Virginia. I have provided birth control consultations, cancer screenings, and delivered babies. I also provide the Virginia women I serve with safe, legal abortion.

I support the Board of Health’s decision to amend the medically-unnecessary restrictions designed solely to close safe, trusted women’s health care centers in Virginia. As a medical professional deeply committed to ensuring that all Virginia women have affordable access to safe, legal reproductive health care, I applaud the Board of Health’s decision to stop letting politics drive poor policy decisions affecting  health of Virginians.

The restrictions on women’s health centers in Virginia deny access to abortion, plain and simple. They do NOT improve health or safety. Three of 21 women’s health centers in Virginia have been forced to close or stop providing abortion services, in part due to these medically-inappropriate restrictions. If the restrictions remain unchanged, additional health centers will close – eliminating access to preventative and critical health care for thousands of Virginia women. Now is your chance to fix these nonsensical, non-medical, and burdensome restrictions and keep Virginia women’s health centers open.

We all agree on the importance of ensuring patient health and safety, but the restrictions on women’s health care centers in Virginia don’t do that. Medical experts, including Dr. Karen Remley, the former Virginia Health Commissioner, and the Virginia Chapter of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists oppose these restrictions because it’s clear that the restrictions have nothing to do with patient safety, and everything to do with inserting politically-motivated, burdensome regulations between a woman and her doctor.

I urge you to move forward with amending these onerous and unnecessary regulations to ensure that regulations are based in evidence-based medicine, and protect patient safety while ensuring access to safe, legal, and critical medical care.

Sara L Imershein, MD MPH FACOG

Falls Church Healthcare Center

February 10, 2015