WA leaders representing Tacoma, Pierce County react to Supreme Court abortion decision
Elected officials representing the South Puget Sound region criticized Friday’s Supreme Court decision to end Americans’ right to an abortion, which had been protected for nearly 50 years.
State law protects abortion rights in Washington, but 13 states were already positioned to ban abortion outright with the use of “trigger laws” designed to take effect with the end of Roe v. Wade, the 1977 case that legalized the practice nationwide.
“This decision is a full-on assault on women’s freedoms that rolls back the fundamental right of reproductive choice in America,” U.S. House Rep. Marilyn Strickland, a Democrat, said in a news release. “This decision will also have dangerous consequences for women and families in the South Sound, and across this country.”
Strickland represents voters in the state’s 10th Congressional District, which includes Olympia, East Tacoma and parts of Pierce, Thurston and Mason counties. She also was mayor of Tacoma from 2010 to 2018. She called the decision a dangerous step toward an anti-women movement and said it threatened other federally protected rights such as desegregation of schools, gay marriage and interracial marriage.
According to the Associated Press, President Joe Biden’s administration and other defenders of abortion rights have made the same warning, saying overturning Roe could threaten high court decisions in favor of gay rights and even possibly contraception.
Liberal Supreme Court justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan said much of the same in their joint dissent of the decision, according to AP: “The majority ‘eliminates a 50-year-old constitutional right that safeguards women’s freedom and equal station. It breaches a core rule-of-law principle, designed to promote constancy in the law. In doing all of that, it places in jeopardy other rights, from contraception to same-sex intimacy and marriage. And finally, it undermines the Court’s legitimacy.’”
U.S. House Rep. Derek Kilmer, also a Democrat, called the decision “outrageous” and said it was a threat to women’s health. Kilmer, who is from Gig Harbor, represents voters in the state’s 6th Congressional District, which includes most of Tacoma, the Olympic Peninsula and most of the Kitsap Peninsula.
“We know that at least 25 states are expected to severely limit or ban abortion in the wake of this ruling – and Republicans in even more states, including Washington, will now undoubtedly make efforts to limit access to reproductive health care,” Kilmer said in a news release.
Both Senators representing Washington state, Democrats Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, criticized the decision. Murray placed the blame on Republicans, saying in a news release that the political party had dragged the country backward by a half-century. On Twitter, Cantwell said it was “a sad and tragic day in America.”
“Republicans ripped away our rights and made this generation the first generation of American women with fewer rights than their mothers,” Murray said. “Republicans are forcing women to stay pregnant and give birth when they don’t want to — no matter the circumstances.”
Washington state’s top legal officer, Attorney General Bob Ferguson, described the Supreme Court’s decision as an “extremist position” that overturned 50 years of legal precedent. In a news release, he said the ruling would put pressure on Washington’s health care network as people come from Idaho and other states to seek health care.
Ferguson, a Democrat, said he would work to defend existing abortion rights in Washington and protect those who come to the state to seek one.
Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards issued a statement about the decision Friday.
“My unequivocal position continues to be that the right to choose is essential to health care for all women, and transgender and nonbinary people who can become pregnant, and that it is fundamental to ensuring true freedom, autonomy and equity,” Woodards said. “As such, I continue to stand united with my Council colleagues in asking Congress as well as President Joe Biden to act with haste in putting people before politics so that the right to choose is preserved for future generations.”
This story was originally published June 24, 2022 at 10:20 AM.
