On December 4, 2014, the Virginia Board of Health voted to amend medically-unnecessary restrictions designed to shut down women’s health centers in Virginia. After their decision, the board received over 1,500 public comments speaking out in favor of rules based on medicine, not politics!
In 2011, Virginia became 1 of 26 states with a Targeted Restriction of Abortion Providers (TRAP) law. Fifty-nine percent of women in the country now live in a state that has a TRAP law designed specifically to reduce their access to safe, legal, abortion.
Three of 21 women’s health centers in Virginia have already been forced to close or stop providing abortion services, in part due to these medically-unnecessary restrictions. If the restrictions remain unchanged, additional health centers will close – cutting off access to preventative and critical health care for thousands of women. Now is our chance to fix these restrictions and keep Virginia women’s health centers open!
