By Kate Sheppard
Tue Aug. 30, 2011
"The regulations require Virginia's 22 clinics to meet strict new physical standards; pre-op rooms, for example, must measure at least 80 square feet, and operating rooms must measure 250 square feet. Hallways must be at least five feet wide. The requirements are based on the state's 2010 guidelines for new outpatient surgical facilities.
Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, told Mother Jones on Monday that the new rules may actually be the most strict regulations in the United States. "It would be challenging for the majority of our facilities to continue offering first-trimester care," Keene said. "These are designed to really cease first-trimester abortion services in the Commonwealth of Virginia."
The president of Washington, D.C.'s Planned Parenthood chapter has already told the Washington Post that she doesn't believe that a clinic in Falls Church, Virginia, will be able to meet all of those requirements. Keene said that many other clinics in the state won't be able to meet them, either—which she thinks is exactly the reason the Department of Health wrote them that way. "There's no doubt in my mind that this is an attack on Roe," said Keene. "You can ban abortion by making it inaccessible." "
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/08/are-virginas-new-abortion-regs-worst-yet
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