On Tuesday the Minnesota Senate Health and Human Services Committee advanced a pro-life bill subjecting abortion facilities to licensure and inspection requirements. This bill would require any facility that commits 10 or more abortions per month to be licensed by the health commissioner in order to operate. To be licensed, the abortion facility would be required to pass an inspection at least once every two years. The bill would also allow the attorney general, a county attorney, or a woman upon whom an abortion has been performed at an unlicensed facility to seek an injunction against that facility.

There is no good reason that abortion facilities should not be subject to these licensure requirements and routine inspections. Until abortion facilities can be completely shut down, they should be subject to rigorous licensure requirements and routine inspections. Perhaps these inspections would prevent the sort of situation that caused an Alabama woman to die from a botched abortion this week. The abortion industry has consistently demonstrated their disregard for women’s health and safety. This bill would hold them to account by requiring them to comply with licensing standards

A recently released report found that 184 abortion facilities in 32 states had failed to follow basic sanitary procedures. The report found instances of staff wearing dirty scrubs and failing to wash their hands before or after procedures, blood and body fluids spattered on the floor and walls, single-use vials being used on multiple patients, failure to clean equipment and surfaces between patients, and storing clean and soiled equipment together. These violations were caught because they happened in states that have inspection and licensure requirements. This raises serious concerns about what kind of violations are going undetected in states that do not have licensure and inspection requirements for abortion facilities.  

Abortion facilities should not be allowed to operate unlicensed and uninspected. Holding the abortion industry accountable is good news for women and babies, and is a step toward the total abolition of abortion. Laws regulating abortion facilities have played a key role in shutting down dangerous abortion businesses in other states and stunting the growth of the ever-expanding abortion industry.

(Image: Flickr, New Voices)