Board of Health,

The Virginia State Board of Health should uphold the abortion center health and safety regulations.This in not a right to choose issue. Never in my medical career was I advised that I could ignore a patients safety or ignore health regulations simply by claiming that it was my right to choose. I worked many years in emergency departments, and never were state or federal regulations on hospitals willfully flaunted simply because the hospital or an employee "chose" to do so. And never did I hear the argument that a health care facility need not follow health and safety regulations because those regulations were imposed by the legislature and they interfered with the facilitys inherent right to determine all aspects of provision of medical care.The Virginia State Board of Health states that one of its priority public health issues is the "Improvement in the health and well-being of all Virginians" and one of the approaches to achieve this priority is "Meeting its statutory mandate as specified in the Code of Virginia."I would hope that the Board of Health takes its work seriously and does not circumvent the statutes that have been put in place to improve the health and wellbeing of all Virginians. Mark J. Berg