Contact the Governor
Call on Governor McDonnell to protect women’s access to reproductive health care and put a stop to the politics at patient expense!
Call the governor’s office at 804-786-2211 or email here.
Here are some suggested talking points to use when contacting the governor:
- Politically-motivated regulations that make it more difficult for health centers to provide high quality health care only make it harder for women and couples to access critical reproductive health care services, including life-saving cancer screenings, family planning, STI testing and treatment, and continued safe, legal abortion care.
- The proposed permanent regulations - specifically the time and resources required to physically alter health centers for no medical reason - will increase financial barriers/hurdles for patients as well as reduce women’s ability to find a health care provider. Stand with the Board's decision to amend the proposed regulations to "grandfather in” existing women’s health centers so that they are not required to meet the same architectural standards demanded of new construction.
- At a time when women need more access to affordable, high quality health care, not less, we’re disappointed to see politics as usual by your administration. Low-income women and rural women will have even less access to safe abortion care and family planning services.
Urge Governor McDonnell to stand with Virginia women, and not place their lives and health in danger by pursuing a narrow, political agenda.
In March of 2011, Governor McDonnell signed Senate Bill 924, a bill that classifies women’s health centers in the state as a category of hospitals. These laws are called "TRAP laws,” which stands for Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers.
As a result of Senate Bill 924, the Virginia Department of Health crafted temporary regulations for women's health centers in the state. The Board of Health, under pressure from the Attorney General’s office, voted on September 15, 2011 to approve the regulations.
Now that the governor approved these temporary regulations, proposed permanent regulations have been crafted by the Department of Health and went before the Board of Health for a vote on June 15. The permanent regulatory process will decide which regulations are placed on women’s health centers when the temporary regulations expire.
While the Board of Health voted on June 15, 2012 to improve these regulations, the Board's amendment reflects a change in the draft of the permanent regulations. We must call on the governor to reject onerous and unnecessary regulations - the new rules will go before his administration for executive review.
Under these regulations, women’s health centers in Virginia will now be subjected to new burdensome rules that threaten the continued availability of safe, legal first-trimester abortion and comprehensive reproductive health care throughout the state.
Join us as we express our outrage at these regulations as dangerous for Virginia women and demand that permanent regulations are based in medicine, not politics!