Victory for Women’s Rights in Texas and Beyond!

Today’s decisive victory in Whole Women’s v. Hellerstedt affirms once and for all the right to abortion established more than 40 years ago under Roe v. Wade, striking down two provisions of a Texas law, HB2, that had forced the closure of all but a handful of Texas abortion clinics.

The ruling is the biggest victory for reproductive rights since Roe. And it sends an important messages to the many states where antichoice legislators have spent the past several years chipping away at abortion rights: You cannot legislate the right to choose out of existence. In ruling that the Texas laws constituted an undue burden on women’s rights, and were designed not to protect women’s health (as the state of Texas disingenuously claimed) but to prevent women from accessing abortion, the Court made it paved the way for clinics to reopen in Texas and made it harder for other states to pass similarly unnecessary, restrictive laws in the future. Lawmakers across the country are on notice: They have no right to inject their religious beliefs into women’s personal decisions.

Today’s ruling is a huge victory for anyone who believes women deserve the right to choose when and whether to start or expand their families But the fight for abortion access doesn’t end today. You’ve probably noticed there’s an election coming up. The next President will choose several new Supreme Court nominees over his or her time in office. These are lifetime appointments, so it’s important we choose a President for whom the right to choose has always been a fundamental principle–not the guy who promised to “punish” women who try to exercise that right.

That’s a Wrap!

It took a special session and a mass veto by Governor Jay Inslee to budge lawmakers out of their latest budget impasse, but the 2016 legislative session finally wrapped up last week.

Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of many of our legislative allies, inaction was par for the course this session, as legislators failed to act on bills that would have protected pregnant workers, advanced gender pay equity, and expanded access to contraception.

Meanwhile, right-wing lawmakers did their best to push bills aimed at constraining abortion rights and restricting access to abortion services for low-income women, including extreme new proposals that mirrored anti-choice laws in states like Arizona, North Carolina, and Texas.

During our visits to Olympia this year, we lobbied key legislators, targeted lawmakers who stood in the way of women’s reproductive and economic equality, held several events (culminating in a huge rally on the Capitol Steps featuring US Sen. Patty Murray), and testified at countless hearings about the importance of preserving and expanding women’s right to choose.

Choice includes the full range of reproductive health options, including healthy pregnancy. To that end, we fought hard for the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, a commonsense bill that would have required employers to provide reasonable accommodations, such as more-frequent restroom breaks, time off for prenatal care appointments, or temporary reassignment to lighter duty, for pregnant workers.

That bill died thanks to partisan deadlock in the senate, but we hope to revisit the proposal next year. We know there is broad consensus that pregnant workers shouldn’t have to choose between a healthy pregnancy and a paycheck.

Other bills that didn’t move forward this year include legislation to allow women to obtain 12 months of birth-control pills, and a bill that would have extended equal-pay protections for women.

Anti-choice legislators also stood in our way this year by trying to move the needle on abortion rights, proposing bills that that would have banned sex-selective abortion, required parental notification for abortion for women under 18, and eliminated state Medicaid funding for abortion care.

Fortunately, we managed to hold off those onerous new restrictions with the help of our stalwart pro-choice champions. But we have to be vigilant, because our pro-choice majority is razor-thin. In this critical election year, with so much at stake, it isn’t enough to be passively pro-choice; we need champions who will actively fight to protect and expand the right to choose in Washington state.

Between now and November, we’ll be identifying and championing elected officials who stand with women by taking tough stands and pushing for bills that advance reproductive and economic equality. And we’ll be targeting those who stand in the way, by focusing our electoral and outreach efforts on lawmakers who propose new restrictions on reproductive health care and refuse to pass legislation, like the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, that helps women succeed in the workplace while still making the reproductive choices that are right for them.

We’ll keep you updated throughout the year about opportunities to help us lift up true pro-choice champions, and oppose those who stand in the way of women’s reproductive freedom!

Seattle Times, Citing NARAL Report, Says WA Doesn’t Value Women’s Health Care Enough

Seattle Times editorial board member Thanh Tan weighs in on the issue of access to reproductive health care today, arguing that even though Washington is a “good” state on the sliding scale by which we judge birth-control and abortion access in an increasingly anti-choice nation, we need to do much more to ensure that everyone, including low-income people and those living in rural areas, has access to reproductive health care, including abortions.

Pointing to public health budget cuts, the arson at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Pullman, and a report this year by NARAL Pro-Choice Washington and Northwest Health Law Advocates that found insurance companies were giving out misleading or false information about birth control coverage, Tan writes that “maintaining the existing women’s health infrastructure is challenging.”

“’When access to care is still highly dependent on financial status, racial status, immigrant status or whether you’re Native American or whether you’re in the military — that’s not really equality, and that’s not really good access,” [UW Family Planning Division director Dr. Sarah] Prager says.

“Another contentious issue right now concerns a broad state rule that allows institutions and doctors to refuse to provide abortion care.

“The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington has documented situations where women suffering miscarriages or nonviable pregnancies were denied abortions or the care was delayed.

“I get why Catholic-run hospitals are opposed to terminating pregnancies. However, when publicly owned hospitals run by Catholic organizations or a community’s only hospital refuse to provide or refer for a legal procedure, that crosses a line.”

When the right to choose is limited by hospital protocols, health-care hurdles, location, or income, it isn’t really a choice, which is why, as Tan writes, “If we don’t stand up for the rights we have now, they might not be there for us when we need them later.”

Anti-Choice “Alternatives” to Planned Parenthood Are Anything But

Anti-choice organizations are constantly trying to prove that Planned Parenthood clinics aren’t necessary by creating sites like this one–getyourcare.org–that direct women to clinics that they say provide the same services as Planned Parenthood.

I looked at their options in my Seattle ZIP code, which happens to be the lowest-income ZIP code in the city. Every clinic the “pro-life” group directed me to were run by a single organization, Neighborcare. Many did not provide women’s health care, in some cases for the simple reason that the locations listed as “substitutes” for Planned Parenthood were children’s clinics inside elementary schools.

Neighborcare is a wonderful organization that provides critical services to low-income women and girls, including in-school clinics where teenagers can access sexual health information and birth control. But their clinics simply don’t have the capacity to take on all of Planned Parenthood’s clients in the city of Seattle. And Neighborcare is chronically underfunded. Flooding them with thousands of new low-income clients will only push organizations like Neighborcare further underwater.

Nor does Neighborcare provide abortion services. In 2011, according to the Guttmacher Institute, around 22,000 women in Washington state obtained legal abortions from providers like Planned Parenthood. Anti-choice organizations who say women can just “go somewhere else” are not only denying the reality that there aren’t enough publicly subsidized clinics in the nation to take on Planned Parenthood’s work, they’re telling low-income women with unplanned pregnancies that they don’t deserve the same options as those with means. It’s gender and economic discrimination disguised as a well-intentioned effort to offer women “alternatives.”

Remembering Dr. George Tiller

Six years ago today, Dr. George R. Tiller, who operated one of the only clinics in the United States where women could obtain late-term abortions, was murdered in the foyer of his church in Wichita, Kansas by “pro-life” extremist Scott Roeder. (Though sentenced to life in prison, Roeder continued to threaten abortion providers from behind bars). In the aftermath of Tiller’s murder, many abortion providers redoubled their efforts to provide needed services, including some who chose to honor Tiller’s legacy by openly providing the services he provided to women in difficult, sometimes heart-breaking, circumstances.

In the six intervening years, the abortion-access landscape across the U.S. has grown ever more difficult to navigate. Twenty-week bans (like the one just overturned by a federal appeals court in Idaho, and the “pain-capable fetus” bill recently passed by the U.S. House) are sweeping across the nation. Parental notification, up to and including two-parent consent, is becoming the norm in many parts of the country. A Presidential candidate is touting the virtues of mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds for abortion patients. And onerous three-day waiting periods are being proposed from Missouri to South Dakota to Mississippi, with the goal of preventing as many abortions (mostly for low-income and rural pregnant women, who have the least ability to travel to abortion clinics repeatedly or take  multiple days off work) as possible.

Meanwhile, abortion clinics are still being targeted by anti-choice terrorists. In 2011, Madison, Wisconsin police arrested a man with a gun who said he planned to kill workers at Madison’s Planned Parenthood clinic and then head on to Milwaukee to do the same. The next year, “suspicious fires” broke at at women’s health clinics across Georgia and in New Orleans.  In 2013, a federal judge ruled that an anti-abortion extremist had the right to deliver bomb threats to an abortion provider in Wichita, Kansas. And just two months ago, the only remaining abortion clinic in Mississippi (which may have to close down because of a potential new law requiring abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital), was vandalized, and its security cameras dismantled, by intruders who also sought to cut power to the building. Those are far from the only cases of anti-choice attacks since George Tiller’s murder, and the truly shocking part is that this coordinated assault on abortion service providers is usually treated as a series of isolated, unrelated incidents, rather than a coordinated effort to silence abortion providers and put them out of business.

Today, allies around the country are remembering George Tiller’s life and legacy, as well as noting how far we still have to go to ensure that no one is terrorized for providing or accessing reproductive health care services. Here is a small sampling.

From Refinery 29: George Tiller Remembered.

From Talking Points Memo:How Dr. Tiller’s Death Haunts Abortion Providers Six Years Later

From MIC.com: Why the Murder of an Abortion Provider Resonates Six Years Later

From Ebony: The Assassination of Dr. Tiller and the Threat Against Black Abortion Providers

Rest in peace, Dr. Tiller. Your work will not be forgotten.