Which is more offensive: picking and choosing which laws to enforce or giving women substandard care?

Another McAuliffe concoction: Invents ‘guidance opinion’ to help Virginia abortion clinics

Democrat Terry McAuliffe is telling supporters that as Virginia governor he would issue a “guidance opinion” that would exempt existing abortion clinics from complying with strict new health and safety standards. The only problem: State officials say there is no such thing as a guidance opinion and that governors have no such formal authority.

Mr. McAuliffe said last week that he plans to take the action to keep 18 remaining centers open after abortion clinics in Fairfax City and Hampton Roads announced that they would shut their doors as a result of the standards.

He said that just one of the centers that remains open meets the requirements and they all would close if he doesn’t act.

“But I will issue what’s called a guidance opinion by mid-March,” he said in a video captured and distributed by Women Speak Out Virginia, an affiliated political action committee of the national Susan B. Anthony List. “I can give a guidance opinion to the Board of Health to grandfather in those remaining clinics to keep them open. That’s why this election is so important, and I will do that.”

However, multiple current and former state officials, both Democrat and Republican, say they are unaware of any formal power of the governor’s office to issue something like that to the Board of Health, which approved the regulations.

Published reports this year indicate that all the remaining abortion clinics were granted temporary licenses last year giving them two years to remain open and meet the new requirements, although pro-choice groups have said the necessary renovations are prohibitively expensive.

The standards call for such things as mandatory inspections of facilities and include provisions on staff training, sanitation requirements and hospital-type construction codes.

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