by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat

• Virginia’s attorney general Ken Cuccinelli has refused to agree to a Board of Health plan which would allow abortion clinics to avoid meeting new abortion clinic regulations:
  

  In a four-sentence letter to the health department, senior assistant Attorney General Allyson K. Tysinger said that the the office would not certify the regulations.

  “The Board does not have the statutory authority to adopt these Regulations,” it says. “[T]he Board has exceeded its authority. Thus, this Office cannot certify these Regulations.”

  The action by the attorney general’s office is not the final word on the subject. The regulations, which would require extensive renovations, will continue to go through executive branch review. The attorney general’s office was only the first step in that process.

• Also in Virginia, a woman is suing her employer after she was allegedly fired after she wouldn’t get an abortion:
  

  The lawsuit claims restaurant President Leopoldo F. Aguirre Sr. ordered the firing and told [the woman] that customers don’t want to see “a belly” on their waitresses.

• Bei Bei Shuai (pictured left) has rejected a plea deal which would have allowed her to plead guilty to attempted feticide and avoid murder charges:
  

  Shuai was eight months pregnant on Dec. 23, 2010, when she ate rat poison after her boyfriend broke up with her. Shuai was hospitalized and doctors detected little wrong with the unborn child’s health for the first few days. The premature girl, Angel Shuai, was delivered by cesarean section Dec. 31, but died from bleeding in the brain three days later after being removed from life support.

• Fox News has a long article on fetal surgery which profiles Addison Kelly, a five-year-old girl who had a tumor removed from her chest cavity when she was in the womb. Also of interest are efforts by researchers to use fetal treatments sooner and sooner:
  

  Efforts under way in fetal surgery involve using less invasive or earlier treatments. One hope is that procedures done today for fetuses who are twentysome weeks old could be done sooner, with greater benefit.

  Dr. Alan Flake, director of CHOP’s Center for Fetal Research, is working with stem cells from adult bone marrow to develop a treatment for the blood disorder sickle-cell anemia that could be administered 12 to 14 weeks into pregnancy. Clinical trials of the therapy should begin in a year or two.

[Photo via The Guardian]