Indeed, hindering women s access to abortion is the true agenda behind such laws. In the U.S., legal abortion is one of the safest medical procedures available. 1 Having failed in their attempts to make all abortion illegal, anti-choice forces are seeking to impose burdensome clinic regulations as part of their plan to make abortion unavailable. Burdensome and expensive clinic regulations will endanger women s health by driving providers from the field and increasing the difficulty of obtaining legal abortion services. In the U.S., legal abortion is one of the safest medical procedures available.
Abortion is far safer than other types of outpatient surgery.
It entails half the risk of death involved in a tonsillectomy and one-hundredth the risk of death involved in an appendectomy. And legal abortion is 11 times safer than childbirth. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has determined that such abortions may be performed safely and appropriately in a physician s office. That excessive regulation of abortion facilities is not needed to preserve women s health is demonstrated by the fact that anti-choice lawmakers are singling out abortion providers only. 8 South Carolina recently imposed new abortion facility regulations that require corridors and doorways to be a specified width, mandate lab tests that are not medically indicated for every woman, and require that the building temperature remain within a certain range.