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The bill was written after allegations that Philly doctor performed illegal abortions.
HARRISBURG — Abortion clinics in Pennsylvania would be required to meet the same safety standards as outpatient surgery centers under a bill that received the approval of a state House committee on Monday.
The bill was written in the wake of allegations that a Philadelphia doctor performed illegal abortions that killed a patient and viable infants, whose spinal cords were severed with scissors. It advanced out of the House Health Committee on a 19-4 vote and would need to go through the full House, the Senate and the governor’s office to become law.
Supporters and critics of the bill disagreed over whether it would improve or hurt the quality of women’s health services in the state.
The Harrisburg-based Pennsylvania Family Council said the bill would provide critically important health and safety protections for women.
“Cases such as this clearly show why it is critical that regulations be placed on abortionists in the commonwealth,” the Pennsylvania Family Council said. “The lives and safety of women are clearly at stake.”
But the American Civil Liberties Union said state law already provides guidelines on equipment, staff, emergency transfers to hospitals, counseling and reporting by abortion clinics. It warned that the bill would require the clinics to make expensive changes to their staffing and buildings that could force most, if not all, to close.
“This will particularly impact poor women and women who reside in rural areas,” the ACLU said.
The state renewed regular inspections of abortion clinics after a February 2010 drug raid by authorities uncovered poor conditions at the Women’s Medical Society clinic, run by Dr. Kermit Gosnell. A Philadelphia grand jury says the state had ended regular inspections in about 1995 to avoid barriers for women seeking abortions.
In January, Gosnell was charged with killing seven babies born alive and with the 2009 death of a woman after a botched abortion at his clinic, which prosecutors called a drug mill by day and an abortion mill by night. Prosecutors, who described the clinic as “a house of horrors,” said hundreds more babies died there.