I strongly SUPPORT the current regulations on abortion centers approved overwhelmingly by the Board of Health.  These regulations should be made permanent and continue to include the strongest standards.  I refuse to accept the premise that abortion is health care, because it ends lives rather than healing them.

However, abortion is clearly a surgical procedure.  As such it has the same risks as any other outpatient surgery.  All outpatient surgical clinics should be held to the highest standards, including abortion clinics.  Regulation of outpatient surgical facilities to insure reasonable standards of safety, sanitation, capability, and competency is a proper function of the State government.  Abortion facilities should not be exempted.  Some have said that abortion was sometimes needed to save the life of the mother, now they want to risk the mother's life in unsanitary conditions.  Makes no sense.

Moreover, the health and safety of women are at least as important as those of animals.  Vetenary clinics are held to higher standards of cleanliness and record keeping than abortion clinics.  Surely women are entitled to at least the same health standards as dogs or cats.

Finally, I should most definitely add that I am NOT a conservative Republican.  They completely lost my support as a result of such welfare reforms as the FAMILY CAP, where if a woman on welfare has more children, her welfare payments do not increase.  Such a provision sends the message that babies conceived out of wedlock by welfare mothers ought to be aborted, will tempt them to abort such babies instead of allowing them to be born, and is therefore pro-abortion.

I must consider any penalties whatsoever for pregnancy, childbirth, or single motherhood to be pro-abortion. Therefore, I must consider any attempts whatsoever to re-stigmatize out-of-wedlock pregnancies, childbirths, and single mothers to be pro-abortion. The fact that a pregnancy is out of wedlock is absolutely no excuse for abortion.  Our first priority in such cases has to be to minimize the risk of abortion. Abortion is a much greater evil than unmarried sexual activity.

Working families have dependency exemptions and child tax credits to help them with raising children.  The dependency exemption and the child tax credit ought to be made 100%-REFUNDABLE TAX CREDITS so that they benefit even those who earn too little to owe any income tax.