updated: LOUISIANA IS ABOUT TO CLOSE ITS ABORTION CLINICS AND NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT IT

EDIT 1/29/14: DATE AND ROOM CHANGE -- the hearing is now TUESDAY, FEB 4 AT 1PM, Room 173. Email fight4RJLA@gmail.com for info or to get more involved.


Oh, Lawd. I am online bright and early to share this news uncovered by some fellow abortioneers in Louisiana. It's scary and needs immediate attention, so please forgive this hasty reblog (from the folks at New Orleans Abortion Fund, with their permission) and take action quickly: show up for the hearing on Wednesday, or write a letter/email for DHH by Tuesday -- see details in purple below.
~~~~~

URGENT: Hearing on "backdoor abortion ban," new clinic regulations in Louisiana

It may not be easy to get excited over 21 pages of Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals regulations, but you'll want to hear about this!

Just before Thanksgiving, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) issued new "emergency" regulations that overhauled the existing regulations on abortion clinics. These 21 pages of rules give DHH the authority to immediately shut down a clinic without opportunity for appeal, even for simple infractions. Clinics have stated that they would be unable to meet the burdensome and excessive requirements, and this would lead to the closure of all five clinics in Louisiana.

DHH's new regulations are another manifestation of the "TRAP" (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws that are sweeping the country. They represent an effective ban on abortion, especially for the low-income women that NOAF serves, who cannot afford to travel. Here are some examples of new provisions:

• Patients must have documented in their charts that hemoglobin and Rh factor lab tests were performed at least 30 days prior to the abortion procedure. This means that some patients will risk being beyond the 20 week deadline in Louisiana (and earlier than that at most clinics) to have an abortion, and will add to the procedure costs for all patients, as they will have to wait an additional month.
• Each clinic who is applying for a new license must submit a "certificate of need" to the State proving the need for their services. In many other circumstances, such as any change to the location or the ownership of an existing clinic, existing clinics must apply for a brand-new license and (re-)satisfy the certificate of need requirement. The subjective nature of these requirements allows the State to severely restrict new licenses and will provide the State with a mechanism for refusing to allow existing clinics to renew their licenses to operate.
• There is no right to appeal deficiencies to any unbiased body outside of the Department of Health and Hospitals. Therefore, every deficiency that a clinic is cited with will be allowed to stand, and those deficiencies are often later used to revoke a clinic’s license on the basis of being a “repeat” offender.
• The new regulations require that all facilities have very specific square footage requirements that are far larger than any currently operating abortion facility. They would be prohibitively expensive to construct, and the requirements have no medical necessity. If the regulations are allowed to go into effect, no clinic will be in compliance on the day the regulations are implemented, and the State will have the ability to shut down every existing abortion clinic in the State.

These regulations were originally enacted without public comment and with no clear indication of need. There will finally be a hearing on Tuesday, February 4 at 1:00pm in Room 173 of the Bienville Building, 628 North 4th Street in Baton Rouge. The New Orleans Abortion Fund and members of allied organizations will be testifying and presenting written comments from advocates, providers, and women who have recently obtained abortions at affected clinics at the public hearing.

The people of Louisiana need your support! Please consider attending this hearing and/or submitting written comments. We have created talking points and a sample letter [PDFs]. Feel free to copy and paste (and re-format if needed!), but please consider adding your personal thoughts.

Hearing details:

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 at 9:30am - get there early; we are packing the place!

Bienville Building, Room 118, 628 North 4th Street, Baton Rouge, LA 70802
NOTE: NOAF and our allies are wearing purple!

If you cannot attend the hearing, we can print and hand-deliver your written comments at the hearing -- you MUST include your full name and address. Email your letter to abortionfundnola@gmail.com by Monday, February3 at 8:00pm CST. 



Thank you! Together, we can fight back!

What's the matter with Kansas?

Recently, a new law was signed by Kansas governor Sam Brownback that significantly altered standards by which all (three) abortion clinics in the state must operate by. These regulations are onerous are best. New regulations include:

• Procedure rooms be at least 150 square feet in size


• Storage areas for “janitorial supplies and equipment” be at least 50 square feet per procedure room


• Recovery area must be at least 80 square feet per patient


• Temperature must be between 68 and 73 degrees in operating rooms


• Temperature must be between 70 and 75 degrees in recovery rooms


• Feature separate dressing rooms for staff and patients


• These dressing rooms must be equipped with a toilet, a sink and a place to store clothes


• Have 13 different types of drugs on hand


• A patient is now required to stay in the recovery room for at least two hours after her procedure, even if the procedure requires no anesthesia


• Clinics must also have a licensed nurse in the clinic when abortions are done

AND THE LIST GOES ON.

These regulations were sent to providers on June 17th. The deadline by which clinics had to comply to these new requirements by is....

Wait for it...

July 1.

Yup. You have 14 days to completely redesign your clinic. You know, just draw up some blueprints. Meet with some construction people, figure out the pricing. Order the materials. Complete the construction. In two weeks. NBD.

Obviously, many are up in arms stating that these new requirements are ridiculous and exist solely to shut clinics down. Republicans and anti-choicers counter saying they are just looking out for women’s health. “Without any oversight, women really are in danger,” Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, said Tuesday, as she took a sip out of her piping hot cup of bullshit.

The Planned Parenthood believes they will be in full compliance with the regulations by the deadline, but the Center for Women’s Health in Overland Park is likely to be denied a license due to these new regulations. They are challenging the law in court saying they were not given enough time to comply to the new law. Aid for Women, a clinic in Kansas City, is closed, at least temporarily due to the new restrictions. It is worth noting they were not even inspected, but were simply denied a license based on information included in their application.

What is interesting about this is that there are places, in the state of Kansas, that do not have these type of guidelines. Specific room size, temperature, patient recovery time, etc are not regulated in this way. Those places?

HOSPITALS AND SURGERY CENTERS.

*FACE PALM*

We Will Keep Our Clinics Open!

In the last year (+) several abortion clinics around the country have closed for a myriad of reasons. We often mention that a vast majority of abortion doctors are "aging out" and fewer medical students currently coming out of school are motivated to provide abortions. Several clinics have also closed after inspections by the Department of Health and Human Services or similar state agencies (DHH, DHS). Abortion provision is challenging and comes up against many blockades on many levels. 

In Fayetteville, Arkansas, the Fayetteville Women's Center closed its doors because the doctor is facing health problems. Several other doctors have become ill, died, or simply reached the age, or well beyond the age, of retirement. Dr. Eugene Glick and Dr. Tiller are two doctors who come to mind who have passed away. Of course, Dr. Tiller did not die of old age or a disease, he was murdered by anti-abortion radicals.

Several clinics have closed after DHH inspections. This is challenging because when a clinic is shut down or its license is suspended, the fairness of DHH is always in question. A few months in Montgomery, Alabama, the Beacon Women's Center had its licence suspended after a DHH inspection. More recently in Shreveport, Louisiana, the Hope Medical Group for Women was shut down after a DHH inspection. Based on a recent law signed by the Louisiana governor, any abortion clinic with any defiency at all must suspend operation immediately and the appeals process to reopen can take months -- here is an article from RH Reality Check to help give a little perspective. According to that article, the owner of Hope Medical Group is going to challenge this law in court. In the northeast, at least two doctors have had to close their doors because of problems found by DHH.

When clinics are closed because DHH finds problems, it is challenging. If DHH came into abortion clinics and advised staff on how to run better medical facilities, that would be great. For example, at my clinic we are constantly striving to improve our patient care and services. The problem is that in reality, very often  DHH inspectors walk into abortion clinics with the intent of finding something wrong. When I read a news story about a clinic being ordered to close, there is no way to know if the problems cited are problems that actually warranted (medically or otherwise) shutting the clinic down. In states like Alabama or Louisiana where the social environment is conservative, it's very possible that both the DHH inspector and the person who wrote the news article are anti-choice. Really, I guess that is possible in Anywhere, USA.

Where I work we spend day after day stressing over what DHH might try to make into an issue. We know we run a clinic that offers safe medical care. Yet instead of focusing on improving our overall patient care and services, we must worry over which piece of our policies and procedures DHH might decide to pick apart if an anti-choice inspector shows up one day.

Abortion care is under seige in this country. Roe v. Wade may never even be overturned, but folks who are in power and against abortion continue to attempt everything they can to make it as difficult as possible to seek abortion care. My boss, who has worked in abortion provision since Roe v. Wade, often mentions that liberals are not as organized as we once were. Women who are of reproductive age today were not alive or not of reproductive age during pre-Roe years. Sometimes I wonder how many hoops women will have to jump through to get a simple medical procedure before folks are ready to get back out and yell, "We will keep our clinics open, enough is enough!"