I was also having some fun. I’m aware that many Arizonans have been unhappy about their state image lately.
Point taken. I’m a little unclear, though, on how secure one should feel when pools of unreasonable (or unreasoning, if you prefer) people are granted the power to decide what a reasonable doubt is in a given instance.
And I take your point, in turn…
They are performing a medical procedure which can have serious complications for the mother having the abortion performed on her. I am not for abortions, but I would never force those beliefs on others. That said, there have been far too many women lost to shoddy abortion procedures by half-wits with coat hangars and I would want to know for sure that if someone I knew were to make that choice to get one, that they would take all reasonable precautions to protect the mother.
Hospital level standards can help to assure that. I did not read the entirety of the bill, but I would likely expect to see that there wil be hospital inspectors involved during a timed schedule.
No mainstream (and reputable) biologist would argue a fetus is not alive. Whether or not a fetus is a person is a whole debate in and of itself. Obviously I afford them personhood and you do not, that’s a debate that millions of people have and on which there is obvious and valid disagreement. Since it is not something that can be objectively proven it is of course inevitable you will have some people saying a fetus is a person and some people saying it isn’t.
However, saying a fetus isn’t alive basically is completely false. No biologist looking at a fetus would say “that isn’t life.” Now whether they would say “it’s a human life” is a totally different thing, that is subjective. But whether or not a fetus is a living entity is not really debatable, it most certainly is. Even someone who is pro-choice wouldn’t seek to change the fundamental scientific definition of what is a living organism and what isn’t.
The fact that it is pre-viable doesn’t mean it isn’t alive. That’s like saying tumors aren’t alive, various parasites aren’t alive, and et cetera.
Would the Virginia legislature want to consider infibulation?
:eek:
I live in Northern Virginia and AFAICT conservatives have decided that they can achieve things this year that could not have been achieved in prior years.
Yes, they are. Do you have any argument than the safety regulations currently in place - if followed and enforced - are inadequate?
Exactly. These precautions are not “reasonable”. They are very unreasonable, designed not to protect mothers, but to pressure abortion providers to close their doors.
No, they can not. It’s the equivalent of requiring every dentist’s office to install an MRI suite with an onsite radiologist. It’s requiring structural, equipment, personnel and procedural alterations that are not needed to safely perform the procedures done at that location.
IANAW, but if I was, and if I was to submit to such a procedure, I think I’d feel more comfortable knowing the facility and the staff met hospital standards.
That’s because, frankly and with no offense at all meant, you’re ignorant of the procedures involved and the risks thereof and the regulations *already *in place to keep things as safe as they need to be. You’re probably also thinking “hospital” = safer, when for these procedures, there’s absolutely no evidence of that.
Ignorance is not a bad thing. It can be corrected by knowledge, as it should be if you were ever in the position to need one of these procedures. They’d be explained to you, as would the risks and what the plan was should Something Bad happen. You’d better understand the procedures before deciding whether or not to undergo one.
Making laws from a position of ignorance, however, is evil and stupid.
Why Not, here’s my take on it. The part of the bill… to increased training and mandatory equipment the clinics currently don’t have certainly can’t be bad. In my lay opinion, anything that (arguably) makes a facility safer or more prepared for the unexpected isn’t a bad thing.
Is it over kill? I dunno. I just find it hard to rally behind the cause here.
Increasing the mandatory (already mandatory? Then why do we need a new bill for it? Enforcement seems to be the issue) stuff they don’t have isn’t pushing them to hospital standards. I guess, if that’s what it says (I can’t make heads or tails of the legalize, to be honest) I don’t have a problem with that part. What I have a problem with is bringing abortion clinics up to hospital standards - the subject of the thread - with things like hallways wide enough for Strykers. Why? They don’t *use *Strykers!
It’s a bad thing because they can’t afford to do it. No one serving that patient population could. And the lawmakers know that. In fact, they’re counting on it, because they’re being disingenuous. They don’t actually want any of these changes to be made, they want to require them so that abortion clinics close their doors “voluntarily” instead.
It’s as if I didn’t like your dog, so rather than accepting the perfectly adequate 6 foot cedar fence you’ve got, I legally required you to build a ten foot high, five inch thick wall with a 20 foot moat beyond it if you want to keep your dog. What’s wrong with that? They do it for the lions at the zoo, right? It would be safer, right? Except I don’t expect you’ll be able to afford it, or have the amount of real estate to even fit it. I don’t expect you to actually *meet *the new requirements, I hope and expect you’ll get rid of the dog, instead.
And actually it was six years ago this month that this same sort of overreaching legislation regarding miscarriages was introduced by a legislator in… Virginia! And that jackhole still has his job.
Well, the people directly affected by this bill, that is to say abortion providers themselves, say that of 21 clinics in the state, 17 will be have their doors shuttered by these new requirements. Now you may still want to argue “well then, apparently those 17 clinics weren’t safe enough.” However there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of that being the case. The rate of complications (which, BTW, are always a tiny fraction of the complications associated with childbirth) isn’t higher in those 17 clinics compared to the other four, and isn’t higher than average overall. The most typical complications of abortion happen 24+ hours after the fact (well after discharge) and almost all are treated on an outpatient basis, anyway, with a prescription the provider calls into a pharmacy for the patient. Requiring an abortion clinic to have wider hallways and more equipment will do nothing to improve those issues.
The rate of malpractice claims against those clinics? Also not higher than the other four, and not higher than the average. And can’t be lowered by having wider halls and doors.
VA already puts an added burden on poor and rural women by requiring all abortions after 12 weeks to be performed in a hospital, which raises the costs significantly. The number one and two reasons why women are delayed in getting an abortion is a lack of provider in their geographical area and the hurdle of the cost.
This is only going to make that situation worse, and comes at a time when Congress is attempting to defund both Planned Parenthood, cutting off access to contraceptive care to millions, and Title X, cutting off access to all reproductive healthcare for millions more. (Poor/uninsured women who don’t qualify for Medicaid.) Doors will be closing, and what are women to do? They’re going to be getting pregnant because they can’t get contraceptives, they won’t be getting abortions because the clinics offering that are gone, but they also won’t be getting prenatal care because the clinics that offered that are gone (or too defunded to provide care) too. The ultimate end is more sick, impoverished and dying women, and more sick, pre-term (with lifelong health consequences) and dying babies. So very very very pro-life.
It’s unclear to me how they know this for sure, since the Board hasn’t crafted new regulations under this law yet.
How do they know they’ll have to close?
Maybe they, you know, have budget planning and can see that they won’t be able to afford any significant changes.
I know it’s shocking and all, but if your profit margin isn’t that high it doesn’t take much to force you into taking a loss and forcing you out of business. It’s not like remodeling and new medical equipment come cheap. It’s possible that they might not have the space to remodel things like hallways and doors even if they were able to get the money. Or maybe they can’t afford the break in income that comes with having to close for a few months while changes take place.
Abortion Provider isn’t a business that I’ve ever associated with high profit margins although I suppose it could be and those 17 businesses are threatening to close out of spite. But unless you can show that those clinics are netting a large amount of money it seems entirely reasonable to believe them when they say they’re going to have to close.
Even so, in the absence of any regulations at all, it’s at least possible that they won’t have to make any changes at all.
No, those are not shocking statements at all.
An equally plausible explanation is that they have no idea if they’ll have to close or not, but are announcing they will have to close in an effort to create public opposition to the bill, which they (correctly) see as a thinly-veiled attack on the abortion business.
As an analogy, a few years ago Virginia considered a bill redefining marriage as between a man and a women, and saying that the state would not “create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effects of marriage.”
Several commentators, including posters here, claimed that this would have the effect of making certain domestic violence offenses among unmarried couples difficult or impossible to prosecute, because “…it would not be domestic violence, it would be battery, which is a lesser charge.” Some commentators here defended that view with great vigor, in fact.
Virginia ultimately passed the law, and although years have passed since they did so, not a single case of frustrated prosecution has come to light… because the change did not, in fact, affect domestic violence laws one iota.
The law’s opponents in that case were, in other words, throwing out scare tactics.
In this case, I don’t understand how, in the absence of regulations, any entity can conclude they will have to close. I readily concede, however, that such an outcome may come to pass; it seems to me to depend on future developments.
But I may be missing something. In that long-ago discussion about domestic violence law in Virginia, I was on very solid ground; my knowledge of the particulars here is much thinner, so I absolutely admit I may be missing some key fact. If I am, perhaps someone could gently enlighten me.
Could I ask you for your source for this, please?
To me your wait and see approach to requires one of three things in order for those clinics to be simply grandstanding:
- The new regulations won’t actually change anything but are instead a rewording of existing requirements. Alternately they are so incredibly trivial that they might as well not exist.
This is theoretically possible, but extremely unlikely as it negates the entire purpose of having new regulations.
- The costs (whether in direct monetary amounts or in lost business) of meeting the new regulations are actually minor.
Again this is unlikely. New medical equipment, new certification of employees, or remodelling are not going to be cheap. It’s also unlikely any major change can be made while remaining in operation.
- Those clinics are lying about their finances and can afford to make large scale changes or will able to pay staff even while not having any income.
Again, it’s possible but unlikely. Abortion provider is not something generally associated with high profit margins so claims that they don’t have access to sufficient funds is certainly not as extraordinary as if they were an oil company claiming the same thing. Absent proof that they do in fact have plenty of ready cash it’s reasonable to assume they aren’t lying, although I agree that they’re almost certainly exagerating just how poor they are.
You’re looking a it from a legal point of view. Don’t. It doesn’t matter if enforcement or prosecution for failing to meet them is the same. It also doesn’t matter if start up costs for a new clinic will be the same, even though I strongly doubt that would be the case. All that matters is how much it costs to convert from the old standards to the new ones. While in theory the new regulations might have no effect on existing clinics it’s highly doubtful that will turn out to be the case, since that’s the entire point. And as long as the cost of conversion isn’t zero then it’s going to affect how many of them stay open.
The regulations already exist, but I may need your help clarifying something.
The bill in question, which I linked to on page 1, will amend Section 32.1-127 of the Virginia Code. That section already exists, and instructs the Virginia Board of Health to come up with regulations governing, amongst other things, 1) construction and maintenance of hospitals, 2) staffing and equipping hospitals, 3) training and certifications of said staffing, and 4) conditions for care. The thrust of this amendment is to add a 5th category - provisions for the prevention and control of infection, disaster preparedness, etc.
There are lots of other parts to that section which provide further guidance to the Board of Health on what their regulations must include. But this section of the Virginia Code has been on the books for years, and presumably there’s already a bevy of regulations put in place by the Board of Health to cover the first 4 things in the above paragraph. The controversial amendment to this amendment adds a line that re-classifies abortion clinics as hospitals:
“For purposes of this paragraph, facilities in which 5 or more first trimester abortions per month are performed shall be classified as a category of “hospital””
Your contention is that this will only apply to the as-yet unwritten regulations regarding infection prevention and disaster preparedness, but I’m not reading it that way. It seems to me that it will also force abortion clinics to comply with all of the rest of the regulations required by that paragraph, which have been on the books for years.
IANAL and I may be reading it wrong, so help me out.
Which is why you should be against putting up onerous regulations with the goal of shutting down perfectly adequate abortion facilities, thus forcing women to go back to unregulated coat hangers.
I am also against to do it yourself silocone injections but there doesn’t seem to be a movement to require legitimate cosmetic surgery offices to meet hospital standards.