A great deal of misinformation seems to be swirling around a bill I presented regarding the safety of women in Maine. It’s a bill that’s being unfairly painted as “anti-abortion” legislation, which — as anyone who has read the bill clearly knows — it’s not.

I submitted L.D. 1312, An Act To License Outpatient Surgical Abortion Facilities, as a proactive measure to help ensure safe access to family planning services for all Maine women. Abortion clinics in Maine are the only outpatient surgical facilities in the state that currently operate with no oversight. This bill would simply bring them in line with every other such facility in Maine. It’s about safe access, not restricting access.

Former Waterville Mayor Karen Heck is one of the uninformed critics trying to portray this as similar legislation passed in Texas, which placed unrealistic requirements on abortion clinics to shut them down. L.D. 1312 is nothing like the Texas bill. As Mario Moretto of the Bangor Daily News accurately reported, this bill “excludes abortion clinics from ‘brick-and-mortar’ requirements about surgery room size and hallway widths. Those standards were among those imposed in Texas that caused many providers to close their doors.”

It’s amazing the facts one can glean from actually reading the bill.

Abortion proponents don’t need to be concerned as long as the clinics operate under the same rules as every other outpatient surgical facility. Abortion clinics are the outlier here. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, no other outpatient surgical facilities are exempt from licensing and inspection, and no one has any idea why abortion clinics were exempted in the first place.

Heck and other critics of the bill point out that no issue at an abortion clinic has been reported since the 1990s.

Perhaps that’s because there hasn’t been any oversight of these clinics, which currently self-report any issues that may crop up. It’s not hard to have a spotless record when you provide your own oversight. Should we should wait until there is a preventative fatality before we decide to act?

Heck also advocates for the expansion of Medicaid in Maine as a way to provide safe care for Maine women. Seriously? Putting the state in economic peril is her solution? This plan hasn’t worked out that well for our friends in New Hampshire, who have had to cut nursing home funding to pay for the same expansion for which Heck advocates.

As the mother of a young daughter, my hope is that Maine can follow Maryland’s lead and act in the best interest of the women all across our state. I find the false accusations and personal attacks I’ve endured reprehensible and offensive. But as my mother once told me: Consider the source.

Rep. Deb Sanderson, R-Chelsesa, is beginning her third term in the Maine House, representing District 88.