Dear Board of Health Members:

Your role is to protect and enhance the health of the people of Virginia, regardless of race, sex, religion, or sexual preferences.  To establish and enforce greater restrictions on any,  already-licensed, free-standing medical facility such as a family planning and an abortion clinic IS DISCRIMINATORY against families and the poor.

I experienced first hand, as a maternal and child health state worker, the critical role out-patient, medical clinics provide for these two populations. Women - young, middle-aged and old; rich or poor use these types of clinics as their primary care providers. They minimalize their needs for medical care and first find care for their children.  Ask any woman who she takes to the doctor first - herself or her child. I have never heard a mother say she comes first.

Especially with our present economy, preventative as well as crisis medical is being postponed even for those people with full health insurance. Historically,  women count on their annual gynecological exams for what are considered the minimum health care: pelvic exams,  STD testing, Pap smears, and breast exams.  These service are stardard requirements for patients at these family and women's  clinics.

To place more restrictions on access to and provision of preventative, safe, and legal clinics does not make even financial sense. Most poor women get NO health care other than critical, emergency  visits  AFTER a medical crisis or trauma.   This crisis care, with both long-term medical and social services needed, costs local, state and federal governments much more than PREVENTATIVE CARE. Women who make the agonizing decision to delay their families, need support not elimination of the alternatives available to them.

I plead that you not be swayed by a minority contingency trying to reduce the care and services for all women in Virginia.

In faith of humanity,

Catherine Brooks, mother and grandmother