Earlier this year, the Governor of Virginia developed a set of regulations under the guise of monitoring the quality of abortion care.  Sounds like a reasonable – even worthy – cause, right?  Don’t be fooled (or “trapped,” rather) by the rhetoric.  Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (or TRAP) is motivated by political agendas and religious dogma, not by genuine concerns for patient care and safety.  Abortion clinics, like all health centers, are already regulated by a variety of oversight agencies.  There is simply no legal or medical reason for treating abortion doctors differently than providers of other outpatient procedures of a similar nature and complexity.

The Virginia TRAP laws, set to take effect in January, are alarming for several reasons.

First, they were issued through an “emergency” administrative process as opposed to routine legislative procedures, thereby skirting most opportunities for public review and comment.  So… what’s the emergency?  Are women dying, experiencing high infection rates, or getting sick after abortions in Virginia?  Nope.

Note:  According to the Guttmacher Institute (among other sources):  “Abortion is one of the safest surgical procedures for women in the United States.  Fewer than 0.5% of women obtaining abortions experience a complication, and the risk of death associated with abortion is about one-tenth that associated with childbirth.”

Secondly, the medical expertise that was actually solicited was, ultimately, discounted.  Several members of the medical committee that advised the state about the regulations have indicated that the final version looks quite different from the one originally drafted.  In short, they said that the regulations went way too far.

Finally, and most significantly, the regulations treat abortion clinics as a type of hospital, thereby subjecting them to burdensome – and unnecessary – structural building requirements.  Typically, when such regulations are implemented, existing facilities are “grandfathered” in.  Not the case here – but not terribly surprising, since the Governor and his Attorney General have made no secret of their staunch opposition to abortion rights.

The draft regulations are nineteen pages long and reference numerous other statutes and regulations, which makes reading them – let alone fully comprehending their impact – a wild goose chase of sorts.  Let’s be clear:  regulation itself is fine – really!  I don’t think any abortion provider would dispute the need for some level of external oversight and guidelines.  But they must be reasonable and appropriate.  And by all – even objective – standards and criteria, these regulations are not.  As one doctor (sort of) joked:  “I can do open heart surgery in a place where I could not perform an abortion!”  The point is, we’d all be hard pressed to identify another area of medicine in which politicians are allowed to meddle in the actual content of practice in this way.

These are just the kinds of laws that the general public – no matter how pro-choice – overlooks.  From the outside, they seem relatively harmless.  In essence, they are back-door measures that enable anti-choice zealots to chip away at abortion access without ruffling too many feathers.  But these are the very laws that make abortion harder to get and more expensive.  They affect women indirectly – by penalizing those who provide the service.  And let’s be honest:  abortion providers already have it pretty tough – hounded by protestors, ostracized by the mainstream medical community, even threatened with physical harm.  So rather than basking in a warm holiday glow this week, a few dozen committed Virginia physicians and their dedicated staff will instead be worried about their jobs… and, ultimately, the women they serve – women who, right now, may have no idea that this is even happening. 

Note:  It’s worth pointing out that even before these burdensome regulations came into play, approximately 85% of Virginia counties had no abortion provider; 54% of Virginia women live in these counties.  Some clinic administrators estimate that all but a handful of Virginia’s twenty-some abortion providers will be unable to comply with the new regulations and will have to close up shop within the next two years.

Ironically, in the Governor’s recently-released budget, he all but eliminated funding for teen pregnancy prevention programs and for HIV prevention and treatment programs, but he added money for additional inspectors of abortion clinics.  Talk about trapped.  Sounds like a well-hatched plan to hold women and their families – especially the most vulnerable ones – hostage by “tying up” the very people who are there to help them.  The Governor and his cronies have a constituency to serve, but it sure as hell isn’t women seeking abortions.  And these regulations aren’t about ensuring the safety of abortion facilities, they are about closing them down — for good.