Maryland House Bill 23 would require abortion providers' facilities be regulated as ambulatory surgical centers. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 95% of abortions are provided in clinics or physicians offices. There are 41 abortion providers in Maryland, and John Nugent, President of Planned Parenthood of Maryland, believes few (if any) of them have the financial means to implement the required changes of this proposed law. 

Ambulatory care facilities are required to have specialized medical equipment, like ventilators; must have wider doors; and their hallways must be at least 4 feet wider than the hallways of a clinic or doctor's office. Widening the hallways four feet would likely require major construction and many clinics simply would not be able to maintain their current buildings. Medically, it's a completely unnecessary provision.

This law is a backhanded attempt to restrict a woman's legal right to obtain an abortion by denying access to abortion providers. This bill is a TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) law: Maryland allows other minor procedures, like skin biopsies and tooth extractions, to be performed in clinics and doctors' offices, yet this bill singles out abortion. This is nothing more than an attempt to restrict access to abortion by forcing it into facilities that are expensive for patients and insurance companies to pay for and expensive for practitioners to maintain.

This is yet another attempt to deny women their legal right to terminate a pregnancy. Tell Maryland lawmakers you won't allow it.  

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