Action | Amend the Regulation after Assessment and Receipt of Public Comment |
Stage | NOIRA |
Comment Period | Ended on 10/31/2018 |
While regulation of any type of health facility is important, be it a hospital, urgent care, specialist's office, or other clinic, regulation that burdens facilities to the point of closure is detrimental to its patients. Women's health clinics, including those that provide abortions, provide many other services specific to women's health that some Virginians cannot receive otherwise. To regulate these clinics into nonexistence would leave many Virginia women with nowhere to go for care concerning pelvic exams, STD testing, certain cancer treatments, and more. Additionally, overregulating small clinics is a big-government solution to a percieved moral, but not legal, problem. It restricts the freedom of women to choose how to lead thier lives at the hands of the government. It also endangers the lives of women who intended to have a child, but whose pregnancy is unviable. I would urge the commonwealth to regulate clinics where abortions are performed no differently from any other nonhospital clinic.