My current income and access to quality health insurance assures that I am able to receive excellent wellness and illness care and treatment. This was not always the case. In my late teens and early twenties I was struggling. For one year, I was receiving food stamps because my income was so low. At that time, my only access to gynocological care was through Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood gave me wellness check-ups and contraceptives at a reduced rate, with a sliding schedule of payment based on my income. If Planned Parenthood had not been available to me in those years, I would not have been able to afford any health care at all.

I am concerned about the new regulations to be placed on Women's Health Care facilities in Virginia. I strongly believe that many of the regulations that are being suggested are purely to shut down such facilities. To receive wellness check-ups that include a pap smear, breast exams and mammography, hallways do not need to be widened. Similar suggested new regulations have nothing to do with the medicine that is being practiced. I would hope that any new regulation will be justified only for medically neccesary, not politically fueled reasons.

Respectfully,

Helen Fall