'A political statement'

The General Assembly passed a bill authorizing stricter regulations for abortion centers Thursday, but the debate is far from over in Virginia.

Pro-abortion lobbyists, in a line echoed by many news media reports, said forcing centers to conform to hospital-style regulations would put 17 of the state's 21 abortion providers out of business.

Pro-life lobbyists such as Family Foundation President Victoria Cobb disagreed. "I think most clinics might not pass their first inspection," Cobb said. If clinics closed, it would be a "political statement" rather than an inability to comply with the regulations.

What will change?

Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, a pro-life Catholic, has expressed his support for the measure, which directs the state Board of Health to regulate abortion centers as hospitals. After the bill becomes law in July, the board will take public comments before issuing guidelines. The regulations could include anything from expensive structural changes such as widening hallways to increased training and mandatory equipment the centers currently don't have.

The guidelines would only apply to centers that perform first trimester abortions, since Virginia law already requires any abortions after 12 weeks to be done in a hospital. More than 27,000 of the 28,000 abortions performed each year in Virginia are completed during the first trimester, said Tarina Keene, executive director for NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia.

Before the new law, Virginia had no restrictions on first trimester abortions, other than that they be performed by a licensed physician. Abortion centers were held to the same criteria as physicians' offices that provide plastic surgery, corrective eye surgeries, and colonoscopies.

"For over 25 years, Virginia abortion clinics have not been held to minimal health and safety standards," Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said. "As a result, women who walk into these clinics are often not treated with the care and respect that any human being deserves."

The regulations follow the high-profile release of LiveAction's undercover sting videos of several Virginia Planned Parenthood centers. The videos show Planned Parenthood employees helping a purported sex trafficker evade the law and obtain illegal abortions for the minors he claimed to be trafficking.

The regulations would not close Virginia's Planned Parenthood centers, according to NARAL, which says the centers were built to comply with hospital-style architectural standards in anticipation of a regulation law.

"We've seen some very confirming news... that these clinics are not meeting proper safety standards," said Cobb. "I think we need to know what those clinics do and who works there."

Will the regulations survive?

If threatened court challenges materialize, abortion centers may not be forced to adhere to the regulations at all.

Democrats argue the bill won't pass constitutional muster because it puts an undue burden on poor women and those in rural areas, where clinics likely would close. They also argue it would violate the equal protection guarantees of the Constitution by treating abortions differently than similar procedures.

Laurence H. Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, said the bill would likely be deemed unconstitutional "because its transparent purpose and effect would be to make such early abortions far more difficult if not impossible for many women to obtain."

Virginia is the first state to define abortion centers as "hospitals," but not the first state to single out abortion centers for regulation. The South Carolina legislature passed strict abortion center regulations in 1995. Subsequently, the state Department of Health and Environmental Control issued a 27-page book of regulations that required centers to meet standards ranging from door widths to the number of recovery rooms.

After the regulations took effect, a group of abortion providers sued the state, saying the regulations were an unnecessary burden on a woman's right to abortion. In August 2000, a federal judge in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of the regulations.

In 2002, one of the centers involved in the lawsuit, the Palmetto State Medical Center, closed, faulting the regulations for unreasonably driving up operating costs. Abortions in South Carolina have gradually declined since the law's passage, according to the Guttmacher Institute. However, it is difficult to tie the decrease to specific regulations because abortions nationally have been on the decline over the past decade.

Last August, Cuccinelli cited the South Carolina case as support for an opinion defending the constitutionality of the Virginia regulations.

The state has "legitimate interests from the outset of the pregnancy in protecting the health of the woman and the life of the fetus," Cuccinelli said.

NARAL and Planned Parenthood have referred to abortion clinic regulations as "TRAP" laws, or "Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers."

"Absolutely all that will be accomplished by this vote is to restrict access to a safe and legal procedure to poor women," said Sen. Mary Margaret Whipple, D-Arlington, who voted against the measure. "This does nothing to end abortions. It is purely discriminatory."

"It is not about banning abortions," said Sen. Jill Vogel, R-Winchester, who voted in favor of the regulations. "It is simply caring for women who are about to have an invasive surgical procedure and creating an environment for them where they have the opportunity to do that in a place that is safe."

If new regulations survive, to have any effect state regulators must enforce them. One of the findings of the grand jury report that led to criminal charges against West Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell was that political factors prompted state officials to cease inspecting abortion facilities in 1990. As a result, for decades Gosnell carried out "live birth" abortions with scissors and ran what prosecutors have called a "house of horrors."

Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania has fired several state employees and overhauled two agencies in the scandal that has led to criminal charges against Gosnell, his wife, and several former employees involving the deaths of seven babies and a 41-year-old refugee.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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