Women of a certain age remember the bloody coat-hanger images brandished by abortion advocates that helped topple abortion laws in all 50 states. But now that getting rid of unborn infants has been legal in the U.S. since Roe v. Wade in 1973, there’s considerably less concern about women’s health.
For example, pro-choice groups insist that abortions should be treated just like any other medical procedure. So why is NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia executive director Tarina Keene livid now that the Virginia Board of Health is doing exactly that?
After a standing-room-only public hearing lasting more than four hours, the board voted 12-1 last week to require the 22 abortion clinics performing first-trimester abortions in Virginia to meet the same medical standards as other ambulatory surgical centers in the commonwealth.
The new regulations, which will go into effect Jan. 1, require abortion clinics to have a licensed physician present when women are put under general anesthesia, submit to unannounced inspections, develop a plan for emergency care, and report any complications to the state Health Department. These are basic safety measures recommended by most medical experts.
A Quinnipiac poll earlier this month found that 55 percent of Virginians support the tougher new regulations, with only 22 percent opposed. If the governor, a majority in the state legislature and the public all approve, why was there opposition from the very people who supposedly want abortions to be as safe as possible?
Abortion advocates like Keene are upset because they know that making abortions safer will cut deeply into the clinics’ bottom line. When push comes to shove, NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia chooses abortion industry profits over the safety and well-being of women it purportedly represents.
Ironically, it was left to Keene’s pro-life counterpart in Virginia to make the case for the tougher new standards.
“A woman from Virginia Beach died in a Philadelphia abortion clinic run by the same individual who is operating unregulated clinics in our commonwealth. There is no watchdog,” said Olivia Gans, president of the Virginia Society for Human Life, the nation’s oldest pro-life group.
Keene and her fellow pro-choicers are also angry that pro-life legislators pulled what they view as a fast one on them. Stymied for years in their efforts to get more stringent abortion clinic regulations past the state Senate Health and Education Committee, lawmakers used a procedural trick at the very end of the legislative session earlier this year to finally get the measure to the Senate floor for a vote.
Democratic Sens. Phillip Puckett, D-Tazewell, and Chuck Colgan, D-Manassas, sided with Republicans and voted for the bill. Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling cast the tie-breaking vote.
The right to an abortion was discovered in a “penumbra” of the U.S. Constitution by unelected Supreme Court justices in 1973, so pro-choicers have no kick coming when their pro-life opponents use whatever parliamentary maneuvers are at their disposal to advance their own cause.
But Keene is right about one thing: The new regs are part of an ongoing attempt to make abortions not only safer, but rarer in Virginia.
“We’re very pleased with these common-sense regulations, but they do not prevent abortion, which is dangerous for women, causing long-term physical and psychological damage, and deadly for their unborn children,” Gans told The Washington Examiner. “That’s our next goal.”
The decades-long battle over abortion is far from over in Virginia, but there should be no more illusions about which side has women’s best interests at heart.
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner’s local opinion editor.
