From the Oct 7 – Oct 13, 2004 issue

News

Washington's Choice

Think choice in Washington State is secure? While Washington gets an A for abortion access, 17 percent of women still have no access to a provider, and a Republican governor could cut reproductive health funding. Choice is still an issue.

by Amy Jenniges

Washington is clearly a pro-choice state. In 1991 state voters passed Initiative 120, codifying Roe v. Wade (pro-lifers have dubbed the ensuing law "the most liberal abortion law anywhere in the United States.") In 1998 a "partial birth abortion" ban initiative was defeated by 57.2 percent. Polls conducted in June 2004 show that just 7 percent of voters in Washington believe abortion should never be permitted, while 59 percent believe it's a decision best left to a woman and her doctor.

Other laws in Washington reflect the state's pro-choice vibe: There are several laws that protect clinics from protesters, the state is virtually free of laws limiting abortion services, and low-income women can get public funding to help pay for the procedure. In the wake of a clinic bombing in Everett, protesters are prohibited from obstructing access to a clinic, threatening patients and staff, or harassing staff over the phone. Only 15 states have similar clinic-protecting laws.

Women who seek abortion services are virtually unrestricted: There is no parental-consent law, no waiting period, and no law mandating a partner's permission. Clinics routinely offer abortions during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and some have an upper limit of 14 weeks. State law allows for abortions, in certain circumstances, until 24 weeks. Most insurance covers abortion, as does Medicaid, and for procedures not covered by health care plans, groups like the CAIR Project help women with funding. If you live along the I-5 corridor, finding a provider is pretty damn easy. All in all, Washington is a pretty great state for those of us who own uteruses.

So it was a bit of a shock when leaders of the state's top pro-choice advocacy groups--Karen Cooper from NARAL Pro-Choice Washington, Chris Charboneau from Planned Parenthood VOTES!, Linda Mitchell from the Women's Political Caucus, and Ramona Oliver from EMILY's List in Washington D.C. --took over a third-floor banquet room in the downtown Red Lion hotel on September 22 to raise a stink about protecting choice in Washington. Armed with the voting history of Republican candidates like George Nethercutt (running against the incumbent, Senator Patty Murray), and a circa-1992 video of gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi boasting about his work against the pro-choice I-120, the four women stressed the anti-choice slant of these two men. They also stumped for pro-choice candidates--like Christine Gregoire for governor and Murray--and said it's crucial for voters to elect them in November.

"We have worked hard for years to keep Washington pro-choice," said Cooper. "And we intend to continue to keep Washington a pro-choice state." Oliver, who had flown in for this event, backed Cooper up: "[Rossi and Nethercutt] have said that their position on choice doesn't matter," Oliver said. "It does matter. And women will defend the right to choose."

Are we steps away from back-alley coat-hanger abortions, or are the Democrats and pro-choice groups just using choice as a potent weapon against candidates like Dino Rossi? Witness Morton Brilliant, communications director at the Gregoire campaign, "Rossi says that he's not running for the Supreme Court, so his views on choice don't matter. That's a rare case of [former] Senator Rossi underexaggerating."

Politics aside, Brilliant has nailed Rossi's argument. As governor of Washington State, its not like Rossi can overturn Roe v. Wade or I-120, even if he wanted to. Following that logic, the pro-choicers should butt out of this state's gubernatorial race and focus on the presidential campaign if they're worried about protecting choice. The next prez will probably get to appoint a few Supreme Court justices, who may have a chance to overturn Roe v. Wade. Choice is an irrelevant issue at the state level, Rossi claims, and arguing over it is a diversion from "real" issues like jobs and health care.

If one thing is clear in this political scuffle, it's that choice is a big issue in the governor's race. The two candidates have radically different views, and in a liberal-leaning state like Washington, the polemic abortion debate is being exploited for all it's worth.

Obviously, Rossi is anti-choice. At NARAL's press conference they showed some videotape of a younger Rossi speaking to the Young Men's Republican Club in the early '90s. He laments the 1991 I-120 win and says he helped campaign against it. And though the measure won, Rossi said, "One of the things that I learned was that the right-to-life message is coming through." In continuing the pro-life movement, he advised the crowd that "we need to give out options, alternatives, not just saying no [to abortion]. Back 90, 100 years ago, we had options and alternatives, we had homes for unwed mothers."

The pro-choice women showing that tape--which Cooper says a NARAL staffer stumbled upon in the organization's archives--were predictably outraged. "I found that chilling," said Planned Parenthood's Charbonneau. "Telling a woman they can 'go live with Aunt Sally' for nine months is not an alternative." Electing someone like Rossi would be "cataclysmic," she said. While Rossi has moderated his image and downplayed his views on choice, Cooper pointed out that the tape proves he was once an "activist" on the issue--which certainly doesn't mesh with his current low-key stance on abortion.

Obviously, Gregoire is a pro-choice Democratic woman. "She does not think that the government belongs in people's bedrooms," Brilliant says. "She wants women to have control over their own reproductive freedom. She doesn't want those decisions to be left up to politicians." Moreover, he points out, Gregoire has been endorsed by NARAL and EMILY's List, two particularly scrutinizing groups when it comes to choice. But so what? Washington's about as pro-choice a state as they come. Could the governor mess with that, either way?

Ask a woman living in Ephrata, a smallish rural town about halfway between Seattle and Spokane, near the Gorge. Unlike Seattle, it's pretty tough to get an abortion in Ephrata. Actually, for most women living north of I-90, in the north-central swath of the state--in towns like Wenatchee, Chelan, or Colville--finding an abortion provider is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. The nearest clinic to Ephrata is in Yakima, about 100 miles away. In order to get an abortion, an Ephrata woman would need time off from work, childcare, and transportation. If she's in her second trimester, she'll need to stay in Yakima overnight for a two-day procedure. That means even more time off work and lodging expenses.

"There are a lot of lower-paying jobs where you don't have medical leave," says Cooper. Her group spends plenty of time working to expand access to reproductive health services in the state. "So it affects low-income women. And it affects young women even more so, because of lack of transportation and lack of money."

For a quarter of the Washington women who need abortion services, complicated travel, time off, and housing scenarios are the norm. According to data from 2000, 19 percent of women who want an abortion have to travel at least 50 miles. Another 6 percent have to travel over 100 miles.

Access to abortion services is so tricky, especially for women on the east side of the Cascades, that NARAL Pro-Choice Washington has a network of 41 volunteers who ferry women to clinics--usually those clustered in Seattle, where access to abortion services is easy to find--and even provide housing. "We probably help about 20 women a year, up to 3 or 4 a month. It just comes in spells," says Cooper.

While these statistics paint a grim picture of reproductive freedom in Washington, the truly grim news is that Washington is one of the best states in the country when it comes to abortion access. NARAL Pro-Choice America ranks Washington second, behind Connecticut, and gives our state an A for access. The nation's overall grade--where one-third of American women live in the 87 percent of counties that have no provider--is a D, with 18 states, like Louisiana and Idaho, flat-out failing.

"The good news is that the state of Washington is actually a very good place to be an abortion provider," says Dr. Suzanne Poppema, who opened Seattle's Aurora Medical Services in 1985. "We are even one of 14 states where poor women can get welfare to pay for an abortion."

Given the state of affairs in Washington--a state with an A rating on abortion and progressive laws protecting choice--would electing Rossi, a Republican who was outspokenly anti-choice in the early '90s, has voted anti-choice in the interim, and is now saying that his views on abortion aren't that relevant to the governor's seat, really wreak havoc on women's reproductive freedom?

Cooper and her colleagues think so. Sure, women who have it good in Washington--those with physical access to reproductive services and medical insurance to cover everything from birth control to an abortion--may not see a dramatic curtailment in their health care under Rossi. But "choice encompasses more than abortion for urban white women who can afford it," Cooper points out. While Rossi may not have the power to overturn Roe v. Wade--though if Bush is reelected, he would certainly appoint Supreme Court justices who could--the governor has plenty of influence on the state's choice landscape. Rossi would have some control over the state budget, which currently provides $80.3 million via the Department of Social and Health Services, and another $4.8 million in state funds under the Department of Health's Family Planing and Reproductive Health Section for reproductive health care in Washington, money which covers things like free birth control, comprehensive sex ed, and abortion service, and money Rossi could slash. Rossi could appoint a new head of the state's Department of Social and Health Services, which oversees family-planning services for poor families, or the Department of Health, which oversees sexual health issues from STDs to abstinence eduction. He can use his seat to influence legislation--he has sponsored anti-choice bills in the past, like one that funded abstinence-only education. And most important, Rossi can sign anti-choice bills that pass, making them law. Governor Gary Locke is a sure veto on anti-choice bills--nine of which passed in Washington over the past two years but stopped at the governor's desk.

Moreover, even though Washington is doing fairly well when it comes to reproductive rights it could be doing better. A governor with a record like Rossi's is unlikely to be an advocate for women-- despite the leaflets his campaign volunteers handed out in the hall outside of the September 22 pro-choice rally. Touting the importance of supporting women who want to start small businesses, Rossi said that he would help "promote women who want to succeed in business, not hold them back." Perhaps he has a plan for state funding of new women-run homes for unwed mothers?

The longer you look at the state of choice in Washington the grayer the picture becomes. Anti-choice groups have succeeded in curtailing the number of providers--by making it difficult to run a clinic or provide abortions in a primary-care health clinic, for fear of potentially violent protests--and by setting up sham "crisis pregnancy clinics" that serve to scare women out of abortions. Groups like NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and the Feminist Women's Health Center (which runs clinics in Yakima, Renton, and Tacoma) are constantly fighting in the state legislature--as well as in Congress--to make sure laws and funding remain pro-choice.

In Washington, there are only 53 providers (as of a 2000 count), down from 57 in 1996. When doctors stop providing abortions (as some did in the late 1990s, following a nationwide surge in clinic violence, which included the murder of several abortion providers) or retire, there aren't new providers able or willing to take their place. Existing clinics also face challenges in staying open--Aurora Medical Services, which used to be on Aurora Avenue in Shoreline, had to move into Seattle in 2001 after their lease ran out. "No one would lease to us or sell to us north of Seattle. Even though there was no real evidence that anything would happen," Dr. Poppema recalls. "That's why we're smack dab in the middle of Seattle (on First Hill) where all the other clinics are."

In most of the state, it's easier to find a "crisis clinic," like Birthright or 1st Choice, than an honest abortion provider. Indeed, there were at least 89 crisis clinics in the state in 2003, or about double the number of legitimate abortion providers. The crisis clinics--which NARAL's Cooper calls "propaganda machines"--don't give women much information over the phone, instead encouraging women to come into their clinic, where they're given a pregnancy test. In many cases, the crisis clinic staff spends hours--the time they claim it takes for the pregnancy test to give a result--showing graphic abortion videos or anti-abortion propaganda. Some women have reported being harassed on the phone by crisis-clinic volunteers if they do, later, get an abortion. Dr. Poppema says she once had a patient who came in for an abortion after first going to a crisis pregnancy clinic. In the exam room the woman asked a question--when would the doctor insert the metal ball covered in knives? "That's what they told her!" Dr. Poppema says, aghast. "A little ball covered with little knives. She believed them, obviously, but she still came in."

These are the reasons why NARAL believes it's important to elect a pro-choice governor in Washington. "If the Republicans controlled the state house, the senate, and the governor's office, we would see a flood of anti-choice bills and they would pass, boom," Cooper explains. "But because of the split, because we've had pro-choice governors, they're not doing that." Upsetting that equation--by electing Republican Dino Rossi for governor--could disturb the balance. Abortion-restriction laws could pass (like mandatory parental consent or waiting periods), or Rossi could cut off state abortion funding, setting Washington's access back years. "I believe we can successfully teach the pro-choice voters of this state that Dino Rossi is anti-choice," Cooper says. "That this is the difference between Rossi and Gregoire."