In a response to a 2010 incident involving an unlicensed doctor providing an abortion that required emergency surgery as a follow up, the state of Maryland has passed a new law saying all clinics that provide surgical abortions must be licensed.

Via The Washington Post:

Clinics that routinely perform surgical abortions and are not regulated by the state must now obtain a license.To do so, they must meet anesthesia, emergency, laboratory and radiologic service requirements adapted from regulations for ambulatory surgical centers.

The department says abortions have been regulated in the state in the same way as other medical procedures and have had to be performed by a licensed physician.

The clinics have been given 30 days to get licensed in order to comply with the new law, which goes into effect on Monday, July 23rd, 2012. Of course, had this law been in effect in 2010, it would have made little difference since it the doctor in question had no license and was operating illegally, which this law doesn’t change. But, just as in Philadelphia after the Kermit Gosnell illegal abortion practice was discovered, the state is taking an opportunity to use isolated incidents of unsafe, illegal abortion to curb access to affordable, safe, and legal varieties.