Virginia’s New Anti-Choice Restrictions Will Force 40-Year-Old Abortion Clinic To Close This Weekend

It can't be said too often or too loudly: It's the TRAP laws that are the overwhelming danger to legal abortion in the country, NOT the personhood or heartbeat laws. They are a smokescreen. They can either be ignored (they are usually ignored by by the Center for Reproductive Rights and the ACLU). TRAP laws are the ones that stand the greatest chance of being upheld in the Federal court system and making it to SCOTUS. States don't even try to enforce the personhood crap: their purpose is as a trigger if Roe is overturned. Heartbeat type laws draws swift injunctions.

Last week, Virginia’s Board of Health voted to finalize unnecessary regulations that will force many of the state’s abortion clinics to shut down. Those new restrictions — which are known as the Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers, or TRAP laws — are already having their intended effect. Hillcrest Clinic, which opened to the public just nine months after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion services, will be closing its doors this weekend.

The state officials pushing for the new abortion regulations claim they will help ensure women’s safety. But in reality, TRAP laws simply overburden abortion clinics by requiring them to make complicated, costly updates to their facilities that don’t actually have anything to do with the quality of the health care they provide. Virginia’s clinics have been figuring out what lies in store for them ever since the state’s TRAP law first passed in 2011, and Hillcrest Clinic determined that it can’t afford to make the updates required under the new regulations:

For four decades, Hillcrest Clinic — South Hampton Roads’ first medical facility devoted to providing legal abortions — defied efforts to close its doors. That run ends Saturday.

Virginia’s new licensing standards for abortion clinics, coupled with a drop in demand for pregnancy terminations, have driven the clinic out of business. [...]

Architects estimated Hillcrest would need $500,000 in renovations — including changing ventilation and temperature controls — to meet the standards, [Hillcrest's director Suzette Caton] said.


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http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/04/19/1896711/virginia-trap-40-year-clinic/