ings of demagogues.  If there is a problem based on medicdal science that needs fixing, so be it.  Othewise, legislators should stay away from imposing non-science solutions on problems that don't exist.

Targeting Planned Parenthood clinics by requiring unusual upgrades from normal out-patient to hospital-level facilities, is religious-based regulatory action, and not medical science-based. I am against intrusion of religion into medical science any form, as a violation of the concept of separation of church and state. Further, there is no evidence of increased mortality or health-related problems in these clinics when compared to other types of out-patient clinics. If Planned Parenthood outpatient clinics are to be targeted, then also targeted should be all the scores of other types of outpatient clinics. For example, in 2011, I had vein-stripping on one leg done in an out-patient clinic that did not have hospital-level facilities or regulations. I was healthy when I went in, and healthy when I came out. Targeting Planned Parenthood clinics like this is clearly discrimiatory, and such regulations should be reversed in Virginia by court action, if not by legislative action. It is bad science imposed by social conservatives.

I am also against furher intrusion into the public and private sectors of religious-motivated regulations related to a woman's right to control her reproductive outcomes. Specifically, I am against religious-based regulations that would impose further restrictions on womens' rights to determine, in consultaion with their physicians, when in the course of their pregnacies they want to terminate. As an example, it is shear nonsense to define as a "person" the zygote, which is the fertilized egg cell before cleavage, or any low-level cell multiplication thereafter, such as to 4,8, or 16 conjoined cells. Such sectarian dabbling into reproductive science calls to mind the Catholic Church's restrictions on Galileo in the 17th century, and fobidding innoculation against smallpox to Catholic parishoners in Quebec in the 19th century. The latter was insisted on by Church authorities as preventing a violation of the "holy temple" of one's body, as supposedly described in the Bible. The result, of course, was that Cathoics died of smallpox and innoculated Protestants lived.

In the same way, regulations governming clinical facilities and termination of pregnacy should be science- and evidence-based, not based on religious tenants or the rant

- Marshall Marcus (vmchum@msn.com)