They pretend to be doctors. They operate on humans. Only a blood-soaked ghoul could object to this one.

From the York Dispatch:

State House passes bill to tighten regulations for abortion clinics

HARRISBURG - A bill to impose more stringent regulations on abortion clinics was approved by a comfortable margin in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives on Wednesday over objections from opponents that it would sharply limit women's access to the procedure.

The move to place Pennsylvania abortion clinics under the same standards as freestanding ambulatory surgical centers was prompted largely by the grotesque conditions prosecutors said were uncovered last year at the Women's Medical Society facility in West Philadelphia when drug investigators executed a search warrant.

The representatives' vote was 148-43, with dozens of Democrats supporting the Republican-sponsored measure.

"Whether some want to admit it or not, abortion is major surgery," said Rep. RoseMarie Swanger, R-Lebanon. "How anyone could favor standards for this procedure that are less than those required for other procedures would, in my opinion, be shortchanging women."

Opponents said many of the proposed new rules regarding the size of rooms and entrances and nurse staffing are unnecessary and so expensive that they will result in clinics closing their doors.

Rep. Cherelle Parker, D-Philadelphia, said travel to get an abortion - which would be more necessary if clinics close - would present a particular barrier to people of relatively modest means.

"If you're wealthy you have more options, and I just ask the members of this chamber to think about those options for those people who may not have bank accounts that are large enough to ensure that they have as many options as they would like," Parker said.

Rep. Kathy Rapp, R-Warren, said the cost of compliance should not outweigh the value of patients' lives.

"Yes, my argument is a pro-life statement to keep women safe in this state," Rapp said.

Rep. Babette Josephs, D-Philadelphia, said abortion rights advocates want pregnant women to have a safe option.

"This bill takes that option away, and I think the people who vote for it ought to be reprimanded, and they will be, by the public," Josephs said.

The new Department of Health standards that the clinics would have to meet address fire safety, personnel and equipment and quality assurance.

The measure faces an uncertain fate in the Senate, where a separate bill focusing on inspections of clinics and how agencies handle complaints about them is under consideration.

The West Philadelphia clinic's owner, Dr. Kermit Gosnell, was charged in January with murder in the deaths of a patient and seven late-term babies who prosecutors say were born alive and were killed.

Prosecutors said the clinic was a drug mill by day and an abortion mill by night. They described it as "a house of horrors" and said hundreds more babies died there.

A report of the grand jury that investigated Gosnell and his clinic said he "regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors."

Gosnell, who's in his 70s, said he didn't understand why he was being charged with eight counts of murder.

"I understand the one count, because a patient died," he told a judge, "but I didn't understand the seven counts."