Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Increasing state regulations and a drop in the abortion rate are considered to be key factors in a record number of clinic closures this year.
Christianity Today is reporting that 44 abortion clinics have been forced to close their doors thus far this year, a rate considered to be unprecedented. Included in this number are clinics considered to be major suppliers of abortion, such as the NOVA Women’s Healthcare facility in Fairfax, Virginia where more than 3,000 abortions a year were performed. New state and local government regulations forced the facility to close because it was not able to bring the clinic up to proper health and safety standards.
Also closing this year was the facility where Abby Johnson, the former Planned Parenthood clinic manager who is now a vocal pro-life advocate, worked for many years. The Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan, Texas closed just four years after she left to begin an apostolate dedicated to helping clinic workers leave the abortion business.
“Knowing that the former abortion clinic I once ran is now closing is the biggest personal victory of my life,” Johnson said in a written statement after the announcement of the shutdown. “From running that facility, to then advocating for its closure, and now celebrating that dream … it shows that my life has indeed come full circle.”
Some of the reasons given for the increased number of closures include the increasing number of state regulations; a growth in pro-life activity and opinion; and a significant decline in the overall abortion rate.
“In some cases, clinics have shut down when abortion doctors retired or were no longer licensed,” Christianity Today reports. “State legislatures enacted 69 pro-life laws this year . . . In all, 48 states considered about 360 such proposals in 2013, Americans United for Life (AUL) reported.”
In 2011, 70 such measures passed into law, and 38 in 2012, according to AUL.
Perhaps the biggest blow to the abortion industry came this year after the horrific evidence revealed during the trial of Kermit Gosnell, an abortionist who was convicted of the barbaric slaughter of numerous infants who were born alive after late-term abortions performed in his filthy West Philadelphia clinic. Gosnell, who is now serving life in prison, was permitted to continue his sub-standard operation for years even though state health officials received a number of complaints about the inferior conditions at the clinic.
As a result, lawmakers in several states, including Pennsylvania, were able to pass new laws requiring clinics to meet the same health and safety standards as outpatient surgical centers, or at least enforcing laws already on the books.
Most U.S. women remain in the dark about the true condition of abortion clinics in the country where they are supposed to be able to access “safe, legal abortion.” The industry likes to paint these new laws as being unnecessary or a means to restrict access to abortion; however, the fact that so many clinics are being forced to close because they can’t meet the same standards as other outpatient centers belies the truth about the sub-standard conditions in which too many are actually operating.
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