The Virginia Board of Health gave final approval last week to a new set of regulations on clinics that perform abortions. This issue has been live since 2011, when the General Assembly decided to tighten the standards abortion clinics are obliged to meet. The Board of Health had initially decided to exclude existing clinics from having to meet the regulations but changed its mind because all 19 clinics in Virginia renewed their licenses last year. Those clinics are now being treated as new clinics and must abide by the new regulations, which primarily mandate architectural changes such as wider hallways like those usually found in hospitals.
Generally, if I do not agree with a policy, I try to at least understand the rationale behind it. But I do not understand the reasoning behind this legislation targeted at abortion clinics. Petty politics appear to be at play despite the fact that supporters of the legislation, including Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, claim that the regulations will protect women.
For example, as a part of the new regulations, clinics must expand parking lots and have wider hallways and doorways. The wider hallways are to ensure that equipment can be transferred throughout the clinic efficiently. I fail to understand the relationship between those physical transformations and abortion procedures. Exactly how will wider hallways make abortion safer? There is generally no need to transport large pieces of equipment for abortions. Clinics generally offer two options to conduct abortion: a pill or a 10-minute procedure. If a person is having an abortion via the pill, the size of hallways is irrelevant. Even for the clinical procedure, there is no surgery involved. The legislation seems to imply that abortion is a dangerous process, worthy of patient or equipment transport, but both dominant methods of abortion are fairly safe.
Furthermore, I am sure that the size of hallways and entrances were built to accommodate for typical clinic procedures when the clinics were built. My point is that the regulations appear arbitrary; instead of ensuring women’s safety, they appear as a measure to complicate abortion processes by discouraging clinics from performing abortions. In addition to the arbitrariness of the laws, the measures must be implemented by next year, which is a relatively short amount of time. Granted, the General Assembly has been talking about the legislation since 2011, but because there has been a lot of discussion on the topic, many clinics may have been waiting for a final decision in hopes of avoiding costly rebuilding efforts.
Opponents of the legislation — particularly abortion rights activists — have argued that these transformations will be overly expensive for the clinics. If these measures actually enhanced the safety of the patients, then clinics should definitely spend as much money as necessary to meet the standards. But, as I have stated earlier, I do not see the point of the tightened regulations. All the money that needs to be spent simply seems a waste. While I do not think that the clinics will close down because of the regulations, it is possible that because of the price of remodeling, the women’s health clinics will have to increase the costs of their procedures. Consequently, less people will be able to afford abortions, particularly if the person is from a lower socioeconomic class. Clinics that perform abortions are not usually limited to that one procedure, either. These clinics usually offer other services such as gynecological exams that may also be affected because of the new changes. The price could go up for those other services as well, which would be problematic and would hurt women rather than help them. The regulations aim at abortion, but its backers do not seem to realize that its effect will not be limited to abortion alone.
On a larger scale, there is hardly any need to impose regulations meant for hospitals onto clinics. In hospitals, where they conduct major surgeries, the regulations make sense. The procedures that clinics generally perform are smaller and less complicated. As a result, imposing hospital regulations on clinics has little to no basis. I find this legislation pointless and in conflict with abortion rights. The regulations has zero effect in protecting women. On the contrary, it is punishing clinics for performing abortions by forcing them to make arbitrary, expensive changes.
Fariha Kabir is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. Her column runs Wednesdays.
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