Draft regulations for Va. abortion clinics could lead some to close, operators say

By Anita Kumar and Lena H. Sun
Published: August 26

"The regulations require the same strict physical requirements as outpatient surgical centers that would be doing complex and invasive surgery, abortion rights activists said. The new requirements are based on dozens of pages of guidelines for health-care facilities published by the Facility Guidelines Institute, a nonprofit group. They specify size of exam rooms (minimum “clear floor area of 80 feet”), public corridors that are a minimum width of 5 feet, and minimum ceiling heights of 7 feet 10 inches.

“The physical plant requirements would be just about the worst in the country,” said Elizabeth Nash, a public policy analyst with the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit reproductive health research center that gathers comprehensive data on abortion in the United States. “They will require abortion clinics to meet the physical plant requirements of hospitals, which is completely out of scale with the safe nature of abortion.”"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/draft-regulations-for-va-abortion-clinics-could-lead-some-to-close-operators-say/2011/08/26/gIQAapB8gJ_story.html