Virginia's board of health has voted to impose new emergency rules likely to close some of the state's 22 abortion clinics in a move critics say is part of a broadening attempt by several states to use health regulations to limit access to terminations.

The regulations, likely to lead to the closure of some clinics, will require even those that provide terminations using pills and not surgery to be equipped with operating theatres and for buildings to meet construction regulations designed for large hospitals.

The use of health regulations to make it difficult for abortion clinics to operate is increasingly popular among conservative politicians in some states who have seen their attempts to pass anti-abortion laws struck down in the courts.

Earlier this year, Kansas introduced health regulations that closed two of the state's three remaining abortion clinics.

"The motive is political ideology to limit access to safe, legal abortion," Jessica Honke, the policy director of Planned Parenthood in Virginia, said of the new regulations in her state.

Honke said the requirements threaten patient privacy because any member of the health board will be able to examine a patient's file. The new building requirements may also prove prohibitive at some of the organisation's clinics, which provide other services such as breast screening and cervical smears.

"Those will be very costly. We will, in some of our health centres, no longer be able to provide medical abortions. Some of our health centres provide only that and it would be very costly to make structural and architectural changes just to be able to provide the medication, the one pill you take at home," she said.

Virginia's Republican governor, Robert McDonnell, who took power earlier this year saying he intended to make it harder to get an abortion, appointed most members of the health board that imposed the regulations, regarded by critics as some of the most stringent in the US.

They change the status of abortion clinics from that accorded to other small medical facilities, such as dentists, to hospitals. That imposes additional requirements for medical staff and equipment as well as building regulations that most of the existing clinics do not meet, including extra wide corridors and larger examination rooms.

The measures also allow the state's health commissioner to suspend or revoke a clinic's licence if it is judged that health standards are not met.

A hearing by the Virginia board of health in the hours before the vote on Thursday was told by a former health director in the state's department of health, Dr William Nelson, that there was no evidence the new regulations will make abortions safer and that they were part of a "sinister campaign".

But the regulations are backed by the anti-abortion Family Foundation, which says it is only concerned with protecting the health of women seeking terminations.

"Without adequate regulations, there is simply no way for anyone to know what's happened inside these clinics," Chris Freund of the Family Foundation told the health board hearing.

Politicians have increasingly turned to health regulation in an attempt to restrict access to abortions after legislative moves have been consistently struck down by courts.

In July, a North Dakota law banning drug-induced terminations, an alternative to surgery, was blocked by a judge. Last month a Texas court blocked key parts of a law drawn up by Rick Perry, the state's governor and leading Republican presidential candidate, that forced women seeking terminations to view a sonogram and listen to the heartbeat of their foetus.

Jordan Goldberg, a legal counsel for the Centre for Reproductive Rights, said legislatures were increasingly passing laws forcing health departments to impose onerous regulations on abortion clinics.

"There's been a real rise in legislation that's intended to force boards of health and departments of health to promulgate regulations that are really not about health and safety but are just a back door way of restricting access to abortion," she said.

"They're politically motivated and intended to close clinics down."

The CRR has already taken legal action to block what it says are politically motivated regulations in Kansas, where two of the state's three clinics were shut down but permitted to reopen while the issue is in the courts. It said it will consider a similar action in the Virginia courts.

Goldberg said regulations in South Carolina and Texas have introduced health regulations that have limited access to abortions by effectively requiring the construction of new facilities.

Honke said she expects there will be further attempts to further restrict access to abortions.

"I think we can expect to continue seeing anti-choice legislation in Virginia," she said.