The TRAP Regulations currently being debated in the VA General Assembly are a threat to women's health and need to be rejected. These unnecessary, harmful and purely political regulations encroach upon women's health provider service centers that offer vital services such as family planning, birth control, pregnancy screenings, ultrasound screenings and provide a medically safe option for women to obtain abortions. The entire intent behind these literal TRAP regulations is enforcing providers to adhere to unnecessary and unrealistic building code standards that hospitals and other clinics would not be subjected to in the state, only these type of providers would singling out the entire motive behind their ultimate goal: a politically motivated attack on women's health from far-right radical Republican conservatives. According to Roe v. Wade, women have the right to CHOOSE to obtain these services. If VA approves these TRAP regulations it will completely eliminate women's ability to choose providers of that service in their own state. It will force these women to go out of state for family planning care regardless of circumstance subjecting them to the regulations of another state in which they do not reside which will be more burdensome on their families. In some instances women may not feel comfortable seeking out another state or may not even have the means to do so as many families in VA especially outside of the Northern VA area, live in near poverty levels. 

If these TRAP regulations are not rejected, we might as well have turned over Roe v. Wade in the state of VA and set women's rights back 200 years. Our voices will not have mattered, nor will they have been heard. Should this legislation pass, the majority of those deciding our fate are white males who reside in middle to high income families from similiar backgrounds and those in favor of the regulation passing (Republican party conservatives/pro-life activitsts) are not even capable of getting pregnant nor dealing with the resulting health care issues that follow. If this passes, we will no longer have a voice.  If this legislation passes then those in the VA General Assembly in favor of it must only agree with the part of Jefferson's doctrine that MEN alone are created equal, NOT women, as we will no longer have a voice over the most important aspect of our own lives - our own bodies.