Stop Attorney General Cuccinelli & help us keep our clinics open!

By Alena Yarmosky, Advocacy & Communications Manager

This Friday, the fate of women’s health and safety in Virginia will be decided.

The Virginia Board of Health will meet on Friday April 12th for its final vote on TRAP regulations, politically motivated and burdensome hospital construction requirements that could force the majority of Virginia’s women’s health centers to close as early as next year.

RSVP to join us in Richmond THIS FRIDAY to stand for women’s health!

Last spring, Virginia women won a huge victory when the Board of Health voted to exempt existing abortion providers from these ridiculous and unnecessary construction requirements. But that wasn’t good enough for Attorney General Cuccinelli, who used every trick in the book – including pressure tactics, legal fiction, and outright lies – to bully the Board into changing their minds.

Now, the Board of Health is set to make its final decision on the fate of women’s health in the Commonwealth – and it’s critical that you are there to stand with us!

You and I know the truth: from day one AG Cuccinelli has been pulling the strings behind the scenes, and has used his office to corrupt what should be a scientific and evidence based regulatory process. Now, he is even refusing to resign as Attorney General while running for Governor, a tradition 9 of his predecessors have embraced.

Is Cuccinelli staying on as AG just to make sure TRAP regulations pass…and our clinics are forced to close? We wouldn’t be surprised – and it’s absolutely critical that we’re prepared. Please join us on Friday to fight TRAP and take a final stand in the battle for Virginia women’s health.

Feel free to email me with questions or for more information! I hope to see you there!!

Virginia Women Trapped by Board of Health Decision

Hi Everyone:

My name is Alena Yarmosky and I am the new Advocacy & Communications Manager with NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia.  I joined the NARAL VA team two weeks ago, and have loved getting to know all of our amazing volunteers and supporters. I look forward to working with you all in the coming weeks and months!

Unfortunately, it has been a tough few days for us here at NARAL Pro-Choice VA, and for women all over the state. At the Virginia Board of Health meeting last Friday (September 14) the Board of Health voted to subject existing women’s health centers to burdensome and medically-unnecessary TRAP regulations.

These proposed construction requirements (now approved by the Board) have nothing to do with protecting women’s health and safety, and are instead designed to force health centers across the state to close. Renovations to meet TRAP regulations could cost millions of dollars, and are simply not an option for many of Virginia’s health centers. If signed into law, TRAP regulations could force over 15 clinics to shut their doors, and keep thousands of Virginia women from accessing essential medical care.

We have activist Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to blame. Cuccinelli has done everything in his power (and many things beyond his legal and constitutional authority) to bully the Board into reversing its June decision and imposing restrictive TRAP regulations. Five Board of Health members caved to his pressure tactics and switched their votes, with a total of 13 out of  15 members voting to put Cuccienlli’s political agenda before medical fact (Jim Edmonson and Dr. Anna Jeng were the only two who stood strong).

Even worse, Friday’s Board meeting was a blatant denial of public comment and the democratic process. Time for public input was slashed in half, and hundreds of pro-choice activists and experts were shut out of the building despite repeated requests to move the meeting to a location that could accommodate all participants.

Unfortunately we can’t be too surprised by the Board’s vote, or by this administration’s blatant disregard for women’s health and rights. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and Governor Bob McDonnell have spent their careers putting an anti-choice political agenda before health, safety, and Virginia law. AG Cuccinelli has publicly stated that his goal is to end abortion in Virginia, and his brazen actions over the last three months have shown us just how serious he is.

We may have lost the battle, but the fight for women’s health is just beginning.

In the coming months, we will continue to fight TRAP before it becomes law. But as the state legislative session draws nearer, Virgina women will again find themselves the target of anti-choice legislators determined to play doctor and erode critical access to reproductive health care.

We will face “personhood”, a bill that could outlaw birth control, common fertility treatments, and abortion  – even in cases of rape or incest. We will face attempts to end abortion after 20 weeks, attempts to ban insurance companies from covering reproductive services, and continued attempts to close clinics through endless bureaucratic hoops and bounds of red tape.

We have to fight back! As Advocacy & Communications Manager here at NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, fighting for women’s health (through phone banking, canvassing, voter drives and more) is a large part of my job. But we need you to stand with us.

Please email me to sign up to volunteer, or if you’re interested in learning more about NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia’s plans for the fall. I look forward to working with you all, and continuing our fight for women’s health.

Stop Attorney Gen. Cuccinelli & Urge the Board of Health: Put Medicine Before Politics!

Just when we thought sanity might have returned to Virginia’s government… Govenor McDonnell & Attorney General Cuccinelli are at it again.

Earlier this summer, the Virginia Board of Health voted to amend a key provision of proposed TRAP regulations (Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers) to exempt existing women’s health centers from burdensome and politically-motivated construction requirements. The amended TRAP regulations (while still posing a serious threat to the privacy and security of patients and providers) were a huge victory for Virginia women.  By amending proposed TRAP regulations to “grandfather in” existing clinics, it is estimated that the Board saved more than twenty women’s health centers across the state from being forced to close their doors.

The Board’s vote was legally sound, constitutional, and medically correct.  But on July 16, Attorney General Cuccinelli announced that he would refuse to certify the amended regulations. His reasoning? According to a letter sent from Cuccinelli to Dr. Karen Remley, commissioner of the Virginia Dept. of Health, in voting to amend TRAP regulations, the Board had “exceeded its authority.”

Reason (and law) show that the Board acted precisely within its authority: Virginia law directs the Board to enact regulations “consistent with the current edition of the Guidelines for Design and Construction of Hospital and Health Care Facilities.” The June 15 decision to amend TRAP (and exempt existing health centers from costly construction requirements) is absolutely “consistent with” the guidelines as written.

Let’s call like it is – Attorney General Cuccinelli rejected the Board’s decision not for any medical or legal reason, but simply because it flew in the face of his anti-choice political agenda. In voting to exempt existing health centers from TRAP regulations, the Board of Health protected access to reproductive health services (including safe abortion) for thousands of women across the Commonwealth. Apparently you can have the constitution, law, and medical community on your side, but dare to protect women’s access to health care? You’re overruled.

Since then, AG Cuccinelli has pulled out every trick in the book to essentially veto the Board’s vote – even though such an action is unconstitutional and blatantly in violation of Virginia law. Now, after months of pressuring the Board to reverse their decision, Cuccinelli is forcing them to meet again and reconsider the proposed TRAP regulations. This time, he hopes to bully the Board of Health into toeing his political line – and putting women’s reproductive health-care back in the line of fire.

We need your help to urge the Board of Health to stand strong against the Attorney General’s bullying! Together, we must take action to stop this administration’s anti-choice agenda before it threatens the health of thousands of Virginia women.

Ways to help:

• Join us THIS FRIDAY, September 14, when the Board meets in Richmond to reconsider TRAP
• Can’t make it to Richmond? Urge the Board of Health to continue to vote in favor of permanent regulations based in medicine, not politics.
• Write to your local paper
• Learn more at the website of the Virginia Coalition to Protect Women’s Health

Looking for more up-to-the-minute information and more ways to get involved? Follow the Va Coalition on Twitter!

Why I support NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia

Guest post by Angela Guzman, Chair of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia’s Board of Directors

In January, I assumed the reins as chair of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia — the 501(c)(4) advocacy arm of Virginia’s now 10-year-old NARAL Pro-Choice America state affiliate. I came on board with my sleeves rolled up, but admittedly, I failed to comprehend just how intensely we were going to have to work in protecting our rights and access to women’s health here in Virginia this year.

The 2012 General Assembly was a firestorm, fueled by anti-choice legislative members intent on advancing a political and ideological agenda — one deeply rooted in misguided beliefs that are dangerous to women’s health, and essentially deem us incapable of reaching sound conclusions about our own bodies, even with the counsel of our trusted medical professionals.

I support NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia because it is incomprehensible to me that I live in a state where our founding fathers (and let’s be honest, our founding mothers, too) developed the United States’ fundamental principles of freedom—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—and yet, this ongoing intrusion of government over women’s bodies and health only continues to escalate in intensity, rather than come to a screeching halt.

Stand up for contraceptive coverage in Richmond on August 1st!

August 1, 2012 will mark an important milestone as several parts of the Affordable Care Act health care reform law go into effect: when many women go to the pharmacy next month to pick up their birth control prescription, they will not be charged a co-pay. This is a big victory by making sure health insurance policies treat birth control as the basic, essential preventative care that it is and make it affordable to as many women as possible.

As you probably know, the Affordable Care Act also includes many other advances for women’s health care access, such as refusing to let insurance companies discriminate against women in pricing and making sure policies cover prenatal and maternity care!

But unfortunately, the fight is far from over when it comes to protecting these and other benefits for improved health care access in the ACA. Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has lead the charge against the Affordable Care Act, spearheading  a host of anti-ACA lawsuits in the states. Now that he’s lost that challenge, he’s hinted that he might not implement the law.

It’s just another instance of Virginia’s activist Attorney General putting his ideology before his job.  We and our colleagues at NARAL Pro-Choice America need your help to show him that enough is enough! 

Join fellow NARAL Pro-Choice America and NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia activists for an event to show Attorney General Cuccinelli that his politics and agenda don’t match the values and priorities of the people of the commonwealth. We’ll be delivering petitions supporting President Obama’s contraceptive-coverage policy.

What: Birth-Control Petition Delivery and Rally
Where: Office of Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, 900 East Main Street, Richmond, VA 23219
*bring a homemade sign! 
When: Wednesday, August 1, at 12:15 p.m.
How: Contact Jen Wang at JWang [at] prochoiceamerica.org to RSVP or for more information.

Hope to see a lot of our activists there! Thanks for getting involved.

Attorney General Wrong to Reject Changes to Regulations for Women’s Health Centers

by Chris Lewis, legal intern:

On Monday, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli announced that his office would not certify the regulations for first-trimester abortion providers passed by the Board of Health in June.  In a memo sent to Health Commissioner Karen Remley, Mr. Cuccinelli claimed that the board overstepped its authority by inserting a “grandfather clause” that exempted existing facilities from the onerous regulations forced through by anti-choice activists.  However, there is nothing in the law that supports Mr. Cuccinelli’s interpretation, and this is yet another example of the Attorney General using his position to advance his anti-abortion crusade.

The Office of the Attorney General has two responsibilities with regard to the adoption of regulations in Virginia.  The first is to serve as that agency’s counsel and provide legal advice during the promulgation of new regulations.  The second is to certify that those regulations are within the agency’s authority.  In no way should the Attorney General’s personal feelings on matters of policy come into play.  The job of the Virginia General Assembly and the various state agencies is to enact policy.  The job of the Attorney General is to provide legal advice to those entities.  If Mr. Cuccinelli wants to have a say in rule-making, he should have never left the state Senate.

The Attorney General claims that the law requires that all clinics must meet the new regulations.  However, Senate Bill 924–which classified abortion clinics as hospitals subject to regulation–does not include this requirement.  It merely adds clinics to the list of facilities that are subject to regulation by the Board of Health.  The law leaves it to the board (comprised mainly of medical professionals) to use their expertise and knowledge to craft rules that will best serve the Commonwealth.  Using this discretion, the board amended the regulations to include only new and renovated facilities, a move that brought the regulations closer to the intent of the experts who wrote the building guidelines as well as keeping with precedent.

Mr. Cuccinelli’s move flies in the face of previous building regulation in Virginia. Typically, all existing facilities are “grandfathered” in and are not subject to new rules.  In fact, the Attorney General’s representative at the June meeting admitted that new regulations have never   been applied to already-constructed buildings.  With neither the law nor precedent supporting his move, Mr. Cuccinelli is clearly taking an activist position and acting solely in the interest of his personal politics.

With the refusal to certify, the regulations will return to the Board of Health to be addressed again – mostly likely in September.  Be sure to contact the board members to encourage them not to submit to political pressure and to once again put medical science and women’s health ahead of personal politics. You can find out more information and many ways to take action at the Virginia Coalition to Protect Women’s Health website.

Stop McDonnell & Cuccinelli’s TRAP scheme

Cross-posted from NARAL Pro-Choice America’s BlogforChoice.com.

by Tarina Keene, Executive Director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia

Sanity seems to have left the commonwealth of Virginia.

Earlier this year, the country watched with shock and awe as Virginia passed a mandatory ultrasound bill that forces a woman to undergo an ultrasound procedure before receiving an abortion – even if she does not want an ultrasound and even if her doctor thinks it is unnecessary. Now, the Old Dominion – Thomas Jefferson’s commonwealth – is again poised to humiliate women and doctors by shutting off access to safe, legal abortion.

Since the McDonnell Administration and an activist attorney general came into power two and half years ago, the policy making process has been wrought with duplicitous backroom deals and contrived regulations in an effort to ban abortion… and even birth control. So far, they’ve gotten away with it.

This Friday, the Virginia Board of Health will again meet to consider proposed permanent regulations for women’s health centers – what we call “TRAP,” targeted regulations on abortion providers. But don’t be fooled. These proposed regulations have nothing to do with patient care or safety despite what McDonnell and Cuccinelli may purport. They want to force doctors’ offices that provide first trimester abortion – and have been doing so safely for nearly 40 years – to now convert themselves overnight into mini-hospitals, which you may agree is nearly impossible to do! The Board of Health literally is imposing new 2010 hospital construction guidelines on doctors’ offices that have been open and operating for four decades! What this means is that women’s health centers must spend hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars adding additional toilets, expanding the size of their doors and hallways, increasing treatment rooms to the size of your car garage, making sure there are as many parking spaces as there are beds (even though there are no overnight stays), and expensive, very specific ventilation systems. All this for one of the safest medical procedures performed in the United States today, which generally takes fewer than 10 minutes to complete.

Simply put – if regulations are passed as written with these forced building construction requirements, the majority of the state’s abortion providers may be forced to close putting women’s health and safety at risk.

What does this mean for women? Under the proposed permanent regulations, the 20 women’s health centers that provide safe, affordable early abortion care in Virginia will be forced by the government to comply with overly burdensome, medically unnecessary regulations to just keep their doors open – costs that could be so high that health centers are forced to close their doors entirely. This has a detrimental impact on women’s access to affordable healthcare, especially for young, low-income, uninsured or underinsured, rural and minority women who count on women’s health centers around the state for their primary care. If even one health center closes, that could mean higher costs for women who already struggle to access and pay for healthcare.

We need to bring sanity back to the commonwealth of Virginia and end attacks on women’s health and privacy. Without public action or legislative oversight, Gov. McDonnell and AG Cuccinell will have a free pass to implement the most aggressive laws in the country to impede access to women’s health care and abortion. This overreach of power is unconscionable! But it’s not too late.

The regulations are before the Virginia Board of Health this Friday June 15. If approved through the next stages of the regulatory process, these regulations will become law in early 2013. Please ask each of the 15 BOH members to use their medical expertise – not politics- to make the logical decision to stop this insane attempt to impose politically motivated regulations onto abortion providers. The women of Virginia are counting on them.

Attorney General Cuccinelli: practicing medicine without a license?

By Staff

This weekend, we got more evidence that Virginia’s new regulations singling out abortion providers are about one thing only: a political agenda to eliminate access to safe, legal abortion in Virginia.

On Saturday, Larry O’Dell of the Associated Press released a story titled, “Some medical advisors question abortion rules.” The story focused on the medical professionals and educators who advised the Virginia Department of Health in developing targeted regulations on abortion providers following the passage of S.B. 924 earlier this year.

The point of the story was simple and clear: the regulations now on the governor’s desk awaiting his approval are drastically different than those recommended by a panel of medical professionals and originally drafted by the Department of  Health, in ways that make them excessively difficult for abortion providers to meet and would force many of them to close.

We’re wondering what happened. And we’re not the only ones. One of the medical professionals on the advisory panel expressed his confusion:

Dr. James E. Ferguson II, chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Virginia…said the document adopted by the board in September went well beyond what the advisory panel recommended. “I don’t know where they got changed, but ultimately they were different, more stringent and more restrictive – and several of them, at least, unnecessary,” Ferguson said.

Those of us who were at the Board of Health meeting in September saw Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s office hijack deliberations in order to make the regulations as far-reaching as possible.

The new article highlights some specific ways Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s office worked to turn medical suggestions for targeted regulations that would have at least been related to medical science into an overreaching, ideologically-motivated attack on abortion access. Let’s take a look at a couple medical recommendations Cuccinelli’s office rejected:

Medical recommendation 1: Allow existing facilities to be “grandfathered” in to building requirements.

This would mean that, according to the AP article, existing offices “would not be held to standards that were not in place when they opened.” No other existing medical facilities in Virginia are required to be retrofitted to meet new construction codes.

Ken Cuccinelli’s view: “New strict building standards – which cover things like hallway widths and covered entrances – are mandated by state law.”

Medical advice: Rejected.

Medical recommendation 2: Limit regulations to offices providing surgical abortion and exempt offices that only provide medical abortion.

This would mean that offices offering medication abortion would not be subject to the same strict building requirements as an office providing surgery — a commonsense exception that would have excluded providers that do not even do surgical procedures from having to adhere to hospital-style regulations.

Ken Cuccinelli’s view: “State law makes no distinction between medical and surgical abortions so the board can’t either.”

Medical advice: Rejected

The bottom line: Attorney General Cuccinelli’s office continues overreaching to push these regulations to their most extreme possible form, disregarding sound medical science and the expertise of health professionals in his pursuit of a backdoor ban on access to abortion in Virginia.

If you haven’t yet, contact Governor McDonnell or write a  letter to the editor of your local paper to express your concern about anti-choice ideology trumping sound medical science and women’s healthcare needs in the crafting of these regulations.

Board of Health meeting

Last Friday, October 15, the Virginia Board of Health met for the first time since A.G. Cuccinelli’s August opinion concerning increased regulation of abortion clinics.  The opinion called for the governor-appointed Board to impose more stringent regulations on first-trimester abortion providers–despite the fact they are already regulated by the Board of Medicine, the Board of Health Professionals and OSHA, among others.  Neither side of this hotly contested issue knew what to expect on Friday, but those hoping to hear new regulations proposed were disappointed—NARAL Virginia was in Richmond for the meeting, and not a single new restriction was mentioned while we were there.  We’ll be keeping an eye out to make sure there’s no action on this front in the future.

Fighting Ignorance with Fact: Clinics are far from unregulated

Ever since AG Cuccinelli released his opinion that the state government of Virginia can, and should, regulate abortions more rigorously than other outpatient procedures, there has been an outcry at the implied lack of regulations for abortion clinics. One Bristow citizen wrote to Inside NOVA, “I live in a suburb outside Manassas and am deeply concerned about the lack of health and safety regulations for abortion clinics in the city.” A Charlottesville resident writes in C-Ville Weekly: “Abortion proponents would sacrifice women…at the altar of ‘access.’ For this, they should be stripped of any feminist credentials.” (This second piece is in response to an opinion piece by former Charlottesville mayor, and abortion patient, Virginia Daugherty.)  The two letters are symptoms of a current plague of misinformation about current abortion regulations, so we’re coming back with some facts. Pass them along, and help us keep abortions safe and legal in Virginia!

Far from unrestricted, abortion clinics are already regulated by four different governing bodies: the Department of Health Professions, the Board of Medicine, the Board of Pharmacy, and the Board of Nursing.  Providers are also subject to American Medical Association and National Abortion Federation statutes, as well as federal regulations like the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA); OSHA and the FDA also exert control over the procedure and providers.

Abortion clinics are not only regulated as physicians’ offices performing outpatient procedures, but also provisions in Virginia law specifically govern abortion.  For example, physicians performing first or second trimester abortions must be licensed by the Board of Medicine.  In addition, doctors must inform potential abortion patients about alternatives (such as adoption), describe the fetus’ physical characteristics and the abortion procedure, and obtain the patient’s informed consent.  There are tough penalties for not adhering to these rules.

Why is it important that people know the truth about these regulations? Because without the facts, anti-choice crusaders with a one-track mind will pursue unnecessary regulations to end access to abortion in Virginia. In fact, anti-choice elected officials are using local municipalities to assault access to abortion.  On Monday of this week, the city of Manassas, passed an anti-choice resolution because “the potential complications of abortion procedures are numerous and well-documented.” (You can find the text of the resolution here beginning on page 121.) This is flatly untrue.  The complication rate for abortion is .3%, compared to 1.7% for tonsillectomies, 1-5% for breast augmentation, and .4%-3.5% for LASIK (for which 10% of patients also need additional treatment).  Abortion is safer than any of these fairly common procedures.  However, there is no anti-tonsillectomy group calling for greater restrictions on the procedure because, just like with abortion, there is no need for further regulations. Abortion is safe, legal, and regulated. We have to make sure officials who publicly make false assertions while refusing invitations to visit the offices they are decrying do not get away with spreading lies about the safety and regulation of abortion.

 

[Thanks to our intern Brett for her work on this post.]