Maybe we’re tired of hearing about it. Even so, I’m surprised by the lack of buzz about South Dakota’s new abortion law.
Signed Monday by Gov. Mike Rounds, it makes it a felony for doctors to perform an abortion unless it’s to save a woman’s life. Rape? No. Incest? No. The law kicks in July 1.
If that strict ban doesn’t startle you, maybe this will: In Snohomish County, no local doctors officially offer abortions.
“I’m the one,” said Dr. Anna Kaminski, assistant medical director of Planned Parenthood of Western Washington. She travels from Seattle to Planned Parenthood clinics in Everett and other cities in the Puget Sound area to perform abortions.
Kaminski has seen a decline in access even in a state on the abortion-rights forefront. In 1970, three years before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion, Washington voters approved Referendum 20. Other states had already liberalized abortion laws, but Washington was the first to do so by popular vote.
“It’s a little less than it was, say, 10 or 15 years ago,” Kaminski said of abortion access in the area. High malpractice insurance costs for obstetrics care is one factor, she said.
“The other issue is the medical community in general has not always been supportive of colleagues offering services. Doctors may think, ‘Sure I support it, but if I offer abortion, I may be ostracized by my colleagues or by potential patients,’ ” Kaminski said.
Some obstetricians, she said, quietly “offer pregnancy termination, but only to established patients.”
Kaminski said about 6,000 abortions are done annually at Puget Sound-area Planned Parenthood clinics. About 800 abortions are performed each year in South Dakota, which has only one provider, a clinic in Sioux Falls.
With two new Supreme Court justices appointed by President Bush, an abortion foe, the high court could soon reconsider Roe v. Wade. Even if the ruling is overturned, the essence of Roe v. Wade would remain part of Washington state’s law.
In 1991, state voters passed Initiative 120, the Reproductive Privacy Act. Nevertheless, Kaminski is troubled by South Dakota’s law and a possible turning of the tide by the high court.
“It’s a slippery slope,” she said. Kaminski fears laws that could target emergency contraception and some birth control methods.
After 13 years of doing abortions, Kaminski said: “I do not see women who don’t care. I see women thinking very deeply about what they’re doing.”
At the opposite end of the spectrum on the abortion issue, Dan Kellner doesn’t disagree about the gravity of the choice.
“I don’t see women considering it lightly,” said Kellner, CEO of Pregnancy Resource Center of Snohomish County. The faith-based nonprofit agency, with facilities in Everett and Monroe, encourages women to choose alternatives to abortion.
Women coming to the Pregnancy Resource Center get information on adoption and choosing to keep their babies, as well as abortion, he said. Last year, more than 7,500 people contacted the center, and about 1,000 were served.
“Even if a young woman goes through our process but chooses an abortion, if they want to talk about it, our doors are wide open. We want to help them work through any level of pain,” Kellner said.
“We’re not a legislative group of any type,” he added, declining to comment on recent developments on the abortion front. Still, he’s unwavering in the organization’s message: “We believe that life begins at conception. Period.”
Kaminski is just as steadfast in her aim. “My personal goal is to make sure women stay healthy, alive and fertile,” she said.
Kellner and Kaminski are poles apart on the abortion issue, but I suspect a good many of us are in a murkier middle space.
In 1994, I wrote about my unplanned pregnancy at age 44: “For me, abortion is wrong. … But for me, choosing life has been easy. … I have never been pregnant at 13. I have never been raped. I have never known poverty. Choice? I never really had to choose.”
When I was in high school, a friend’s mom had an “Every child should be wanted” bumper sticker on her car, openly urging voters to approve abortion reform. That seemed very bold back then, particularly in my hometown of Spokane. It would still be bold.
Voters here did approve abortion rights in 1970. But I wonder, has there been a sea change? What happened to the wide-open access envisioned decades ago? As laws such as South Dakota’s rein in rights, it seems awfully quiet.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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