New changes in the rules and regulations that abortion clinics in Louisiana have to follow may lead to problems for clinics and their patients.
The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals are in the process of wrapping up regulations that could end up closing all five of Louisiana’s abortion clinics, including baton rouge’s only clinic Delta Clinic of Baton Rouge. One of the new rules that clinics must abide by is that they must apply for a “certificate of need”. The health Department can accept or deny these certificates.  Along with this, clinics will be forced to comply with new space requirements that none currently meet. LSU student and Vice President of Voices of Planned Parenthood at LSU, Matt Novak feels that these size requirements are unfair to clinics across the state and states that “The size requirements that are required, no facility in the state has that and it’s so expensive to construct.”
These size requirements might seem unfair to some but to others it is necessary for the health and safety of the women involved.
In the first draft of these regulations there was a new rule that requires mother’s to have a blood test 30 days before procedure. This rule was removed due to backlash and led some to believe that these regulations were created to make it hard for clinics to operate.
Novak is among those that agree that these rules were made to make it difficult and states “This was definitely put in place to make it difficult for clinics to operate because there was already a 20 week abortion ban. The first draft had the 30-day blood trials in it and that would have made it just completely impossible, but they took that out. Still with the size requirements and the space requirements it makes it really bad. “
With the threats that these new rules bring to clinics it is clear that women across the state will have to prepare for changes.