Should abortion clinics be regulated like other outpatient surgery facilities?

[cali]

8. absolutely not. despite the claims of anti-choicers, abortion

is very safe in this country:

http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/facts/safety_of_abortion.html

these laws have nothing to do with safety and everything to do with regulating clinics out of business.

The Virginia Board of Health voted Friday to require clinics that perform abortions to meet strict, hospital-style building codes that operators say could put many of them out of business.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/va-politics/va-board-adopts-strict-abortion-clinic-rules/2013/04/12/fb60d3ca-a35f-11e2-82bc-511538ae90a4_story.html

These regulations are known as TRAP laws-

What is a TRAP bill?

TRAP stands for Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers. TRAP bills single out abortion providers for medically unnecessary, politically motivated state regulations. They can be divided into three general categories:

a measure that singles out abortion providers for medically unnecessary regulations, standards, personnel qualifications, building and/or structural requirements;
a politically motivated provision that needlessly addresses the licensing of abortion clinics and/or charges an exorbitant fee to register a clinic in the state; or
a measure that unnecessarily regulates where abortions may be provided or designates abortion clinics as ambulatory surgical centers, outpatient care centers, or hospitals without medical justification.

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Abortion is one of the safest and most commonly provided medical procedures in the United States. Fewer than 0.3% of abortion patients experience a complication requiring hospitalization.1 In the U.S., more than 90% of all abortions are provided in outpatient facilities such as doctors' offices and clinics. Credit for the outstanding safety record of abortion care is attributed to the specialized quality care given and received in these facilities. Since the legalization of abortion in 1973, the provision of abortion services in the U.S. has become a public health model for the rest of the world. There is no evidence that abortions would be safer in another setting, or that abortions are performed inadequately in outpatient facilities.

What is the impact of TRAP laws?

Enactment of this type of legislation discourages health care providers from offering abortion care and can make provision very burdensome and/or expensive for smaller providers. This exacerbates the provider shortage that already exists in the United States. In 2000, 87% of counties in the U.S. did not have a single abortion provider, and this number rose to 97% for non-metropolitan counties.3 In addition, mandated staffing requirements and qualifications that often appear in TRAP bills restrict clinicians' autonomy by tying them to a particular hospital within a certain distance of the clinic, which unnecessarily limits the ability of providers to travel to serve underrepresented populations.

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http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/facts/trap_laws.html