And this is not about religion, or discouraging abortion, or limiting "choice" (to kill other members of the human race because they are inconvenient). No, it is about public health and safety.

Consider this story.

The Alternatives abortion clinic in Atlantic City, New Jersey, opted to surrender its license to the state instead of correcting the list of health violations detailed in a 116-page report.

Atlantic City Councilman John Schultz, who leased the facility to Alternatives, said the clinic's equipment was emptied out of the building last month and the space is available for lease.

The state's report detailed a slew of violations at the clinic, including bloodstained operating tables, expired drugs and the absence of a sterilization sink.

The facility had not been inspected in six years, even though state law requires annual inspection. I guess they didn't want to come into conflict with the abortion industry or the feminists who support them.

Mark Noonan makes these interesting points on one of his sites.

If you go over to the Centers for Disease Control, you'll find that the CDC (at least in 2002) was saying that there is 0.6 deaths per 100,000 abortions - but the problem with this stat is that everything about abortion at CDC is reliant upon voluntary reporting. An abortion mill with 1.2 deaths per 100,000 has no obligation to report and, indeed, would have a vested interest in keeping the death rate quiet. With little or no regulation of abortion at the State and local level, we really have no idea how many women are killed and injured in the course of their abortion procedure.

What we need is to bring the abortion industry under the same regulations which are applied to all medical operations. We need records to be kept; we need suspected cases of abuse to be reported (among the many dirty secrets of the abortion industry is the way they have become the means of choice for older men to hide their statutory rapes of young women); we need to ensure the facilities are up to surgical standards and that the staffs are fully trained not just in baby-butchering, but in emergency medical care in case they botch the abortion. And we should also have a comprehensive study done of abortion in the United States - to find out how many are really happening, and what emotion and physical effects abortion has on the women who have them.

Naturally, any such attempts will be desperately fought against by the pro-abortion fanatics - showing, in the end, that their real desire is that the killing continue. This, I believe, is a result of their guilty consciences - they know what they do and advocate is wrong, but as long as they can prevent any change in the status quo, they believe they can block out the fact that they are committing horrible crimes on a daily basis. Pro-abortion people - and the people fooled into being "pro-choice" - are people more to be pitied than despised; it must be a sad way to view life - but we who are pro-life have a duty to do whatever we can to lessen the ill effects of abortion.

As long as Roe v. Wade stands as precedent, we will be unable to stop the slaughter of the unborn in this country. That is a sad reality. However, treating abortion centers like other medical facilities would be a good start in protecting the woman who make the (wrong) choice to kill their babies from the unscrupulous and incompetent medical "professionals" who operate places like the one in the article above.