Rosemary Codding is the policy director for the Falls Church Healthcare Center in Virginia. And she wants everyone to feel sorry for her, since she has to abide by increased regulations implemented by the state of Virginia. For pro-abortion extremists, this is apparently the worst thing ever, having to actually practice medicine in safe and sanitary conditions. For Codding, she says it might put her clinic out of business.
The Falls Church center, like the other clinics in Virginia, received a waiver exempting them from complying with the architectural requirements for the year. Still, the clinic, which rents space in an office building, requested that an architect see what changes they’d need to make in order to comply with the anti-choice measure. The estimate alone cost the center $11,000.
“For a small community center like ours, $11,000 is almost everything we need to pay for capital improvements for a whole year,” Codding told RH Reality Check. “So now that’s totally wiped out.”
The architect told the center that the cost of renovating could range from $500,000 to $1.5 million, or the equivalent of 40 years’ worth of net resources for the clinic.
“So when people say, ‘You mean you would just close?’ Well, of course,” Codding said.
… Codding, under the law, had to create bylaws for the center, even though they weren’t required under LLC rules. She had to create personnel files for each staff member with state-mandated information, including medical and vaccination history, and a copy of the staff person’s job description and curriculum vitae, to be updated each year.
“That may not seem like much, but it takes time and talent away from what we do,” she said. “It takes resources away from our patient care.”
… Abortion clinics in Virginia have continued to provide quality reproductive health care. “I think I’m digging a hole and filling it back in,” Codding said again. “And yet we do provide quality, meaningful care to our patients, in spite of all this. I think that is amazing.”
It’s interesting that Codding speaks so highly of her patient care, and rails so harshly against the regulations put into place in Virginia. It’s also interesting — and not unexpected — that she ignores why these stricter regulations were enacted.
Several years ago, inspectors found that not one abortion mill in Virginia was free from violations and deficiencies. There were 80 citations among the nine clinics, including:
•18 citations for personnel issues, including no background checks, no ongoing plans for staff training, no maintenance of personnel files, no policy requiring staff to be CPR trained, no policies setting experience and training required to practice
•13 citations for infection prevention issues, including seven clinics with no clear division between clean and dirty utility areas, four centers where personnel weren’t using personal protective equipment, and a host of record-keeping issues
•10 citations regarding the administration, storage, and dispensing of drugs, including four with expired drugs in stock, and others with improper labeling of drugs; no medication dispensing policy
•10 maintenance of equipment citations, including equipment not in good repair, no preventative maintenance plan
•Six citations for local and state building code violations
Employees had also admitted to not knowing which instruments were clean and which ones were not. At least one freezer was found with blood and “conception material” frozen inside. And these were the conditions when employees knew that inspectors were coming — how much worse would they have been if the inspections had been surprise visits?
As for Codding herself, her facility also had the special honor of performing abortions in disgusting conditions after Hurricane Sandy, something she saw as an apparent badge of honor. The facility was flooded with over two inches of water; there was mold everywhere, flooded offices, and water continuing to leak into the building. And for Codding, these were acceptable conditions under which to practice medicine, even though there were in no means safe or sanitary.
Yet she wants us all to feel super sorry for her because Virginia officials are cracking down on the disgusting conditions abortion mills, including hers, were operating under? What dream world is she living in?
