The newly passed TRAP regulations are unethically burdensome to young, low-income, uninsured, and minority women.  In addition to threatening the continued availability of safe, legal first-trimester abortions and preventative reproductive health care throughout the Commonwealth, the regulations also impose expensive building requirements that are not medically or structurally necessary.  

The only thing that the building requirements--5-foot wide public hallways, new ventilation systems, covered front entrances, and drinking fountains in waiting rooms--achieve is the limiting of health services to women and men across the state.  Doctors offices and dentist offices, in which anesthesia and minor outpatient surgeries are performed, are not held under the same stringent policies.  In fact, imposing the hospital-grade requirements on existing clinics (and not grandfathering in those clinics) is even more baffling and obviously targeted toward the systematic elimination of affordable women's health care in the Commonwealth.

By increasing the financial hurdles for both health care clinics as well as patients, many clinics may close and even more women and men will be unable to access affordable reproductive care.  Shutting down clinics that provide contraceptives, education, and, yes, some abortions, does not eliminate abortions.  Rather, it increases the need for them (by eliminating contraceptive availability and education initiatives) as well as open up an underground market for illegal and unsafe abortions.  

These regulations are an embarrassment to the Commonwealth as well as a public health concern.  Keep health care affordable AND available in Virginia.