After vote, Virginia's abortion clinics face new regulation, Posted by Meosha Eaton

Reported by Richmond News, 6 hours ago:

With the backing of two Democrats and a tie-breaking vote cast by Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, Republicans in the Virginia Senate on Thursday won approval of an amended health bill that will require the state's abortion clinics to be regulated like hospitals. The 20-20 vote on Senate Bill 924, which now heads to Gov. Bob McDonnell, represents a significant victory for anti-abortion activists, who have been trying for years to restrict access to abortion in Virginia, only to have bills killed in the Democratic-controlled Senate Education and Health Committee. McDonnell said he will sign the bill, calling it a "clinic safety issue."

"It's still going to have to be reviewed to see if there are any legal issues that need to be addressed," he told reporters Thursday. "But I think it's fair to say that all outpatient surgical hospitals or clinics should be regulated in the same way, and I think this bill will do that." Democratic lawmakers and women's rights advocates decried the legislation. They said it effectively would restrict a woman's access to abortion services by forcing the state's 21 clinics to meet standards set by the Board of Health regulating hospitals — standards currently not required of other physician's practices performing similarly invasive medical procedures.

"This is a sad, sad day for the women of Virginia," said Sen. Janet D. Howell, D-Fairfax. "What we are doing is taking Virginia, which has a well-deserved reputation as being a moderate state, and radicalizing it." Sen. John Watkins, R-Powhatan, said the legislation does not impose "any undue burden" on the ability of a woman to obtain an abortion in Virginia. "This is all about the quality-of-care issue — this is all about patient health and patient safety."

But backers of abortion rights dismissed the argument as masking the bill backers' opposition to abortion. "You know and I know there isn't but one issue involved here," thundered an angry Senate Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax. "It's abortion. ... It isn't women's health." He said anyone trying to convince themselves that they are voting on a women's health issue should "get a life."

Howell said most of the state's abortion clinics are likely to close because of the regulations, which could require retrofitting of their facilities and a lengthy and costly certification process that most clinics could not afford. "The people pushing for this amendment are the same people who don't want women to have any access to abortion," she said. NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia said the bill "represents a shameful level of political interference in the doctor-patient relationship.

"The politicians behind this plan falsely claim they are protecting women's health, yet their ultimate goal is to make it even more difficult for women to access abortion care in Virginia," said Tarina Keene, the group's executive director. Victoria Cobb, president of The Family Foundation of Virginia, hailed the vote. "After more than two decades, with today's vote Virginia's abortion centers will no longer be able to hide behind a veil of politically motivated secrecy," she said.

"We look forward to working through the regulatory process on ensuring that the regulations imposed by the Board of Health ensure that these centers are safe for the women who make the unfortunate choice of abortion." Currently, first-trimester abortions are considered medical procedures that can be performed in physicians' offices, similar to medical procedures such as colonoscopies, vision correction surgery, cosmetic surgery and dental surgery.

Abortions in the second trimester or later must be performed in a hospital setting. Opponents said the legislation will make Virginia the only state in the country to require first-trimester procedures to be performed in a hospital. Under the legislation, any physician's office performing five or more first trimester abortions a month would be classified as a hospital, subject to special regulations established by the state Board of Health within the next 280 days.

The 15-member board includes 10 members appointed by former Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, a Democrat, and four members appointed by McDonnell, a Republican. One seat is vacant. The vote came after a long and impassioned debate on the floor of the Senate, where Democrats hold a 22-18 majority. It was swung by the votes of two anti-abortion Democrats in moderately conservative districts — Sens. Phillip P. Puckett, D-Russell, and Charles J. Colgan, D-Prince William. Neither rose to speak on the bill.

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, an anti-abortion Republican, said he believes the legislation is constitutional and called its passage a "victory for life and the dignity of women" that will upgrade health and safety standards in Virginia's abortion clinics.

Democrats and women's rights advocates said the legislation, once signed into law, will almost certainly face a legal challenge. Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said that if someone challenges the statute, "the litigation could take years to resolve." After the vote, a number of Democratic senators privately blamed their own caucus for allowing the bill to pass out of committee. "We were outsmarted," said one senator. "The pro-choice groups were outsmarted, too. This should never have come to this."

Senate Bill 924, sponsored by Sen. Ryan T. McDougle, R-Hanover, originally dealt with the need for emergency plans for security and infectious-disease issues at hospitals and nursing facilities. But it applied to a section of the Virginia code where any legislation governing the regulation of abortion clinics would have to be entered, which protected the clinic amendments proposed on the House floor by Del. Kathy Byron, R-Campbell, from being stripped from the bill for not being relevant.

Howell said Senate Bill 924 was clearly "a plant" designed to make it through the Senate so it could go to the House and be amended by the Republican majority. She said that as a result of what happened with the legislation, it is likely that committees will end up "killing more bills" to prevent amendments from being slapped on after the committee process is completed.

"If it's got the potential, it probably ain't going to get out," Saslaw said after the vote.

"When you deal with major legislation like this, this is not the way it should be done," he continued. "The Family Foundation has that crowd in an absolute death grip — the Republican party. An absolute death grip. Their stated goal is to strip the women in Virginia and in the nation ... of their ability to get an abortion."

Cobb, the Family Foundation president, is married to Matt Cobb, deputy secretary of health and human resources in the McDonnell administration. Saslaw said the Democrats who voted for the clinic regulation amendments — Colgan and Puckett — did so out of their personal beliefs, not to enhance their chances for re-election this November, when all House and Senate seats are up for election.

"One thing we don't do is we don't take caucus votes," said Saslaw. "That's what (they) believe, and I can't argue with that."