This Washington
NARAL to Gregoire: "We Hope You Will Preserve Health Care for Women"
At Saturday night's NARAL Pro-Choice Washington annual auction and Halloween masquerade ball---notable guests included Seattle City Council member Jean Godden (the only council member we saw at the event), onetime (and future?) congressional candidate Suzan DelBene, port commissioner Gael Tarleton, and congressional contenders Roger Goodman, Marko Liias, and Laura Ruderman---NARAL volunteer director Sasha Summer Cousineau gave a special shout-out to Gov. Chris Gregoire, who was in the room, for preserving funding for women's health care and supporting abortion rights despite an ongoing multi-billion-dollar state budget shortfall and a national political climate that has become increasingly hostile to women's right to choose.
Currently, state legislatures across the nation are considering new laws that would severely limit women's rights to abortion and even birth control; in Mississippi, for example, the so-called "personhood law" would make everything from IUDs to most hormonal birth control to miscarriages illegal.
"Governor Gregoire, we love and adore you, and we hope you will preserve health care for women," Cousineau said. The need for funding, advocates noted, is particularly keen at a time when abortion options for women in the state are shrinking thanks to Swedish Health Care's merger with the Catholic-affiliated Providence Health Services. Swedish has agreed to fund a new Planned Parenthood clinic in Seattle, but a clinic in a city where abortion options are already plentiful does nothing to serve women in rural areas, or women who need hospital care for complicated abortion procedures. "Every time we separate women's health care from health care in general, it's a major step back for women," Cousineau said.
Last year, despite $4.6 billion in cuts to the biennial state budget, the state legislature passed a law expending access to publicly funded family planning services to 250 percent of the federal poverty line, up from 200 percent of poverty. We have calls in to NARAL and Planned Parenthood for other specific examples of instances where Gregoire has fought for women's health care funding.
Currently, state legislatures across the nation are considering new laws that would severely limit women's rights to abortion and even birth control; in Mississippi, for example, the so-called "personhood law" would make everything from IUDs to most hormonal birth control to miscarriages illegal.
"Governor Gregoire, we love and adore you, and we hope you will preserve health care for women," Cousineau said. The need for funding, advocates noted, is particularly keen at a time when abortion options for women in the state are shrinking thanks to Swedish Health Care's merger with the Catholic-affiliated Providence Health Services. Swedish has agreed to fund a new Planned Parenthood clinic in Seattle, but a clinic in a city where abortion options are already plentiful does nothing to serve women in rural areas, or women who need hospital care for complicated abortion procedures. "Every time we separate women's health care from health care in general, it's a major step back for women," Cousineau said.
Last year, despite $4.6 billion in cuts to the biennial state budget, the state legislature passed a law expending access to publicly funded family planning services to 250 percent of the federal poverty line, up from 200 percent of poverty. We have calls in to NARAL and Planned Parenthood for other specific examples of instances where Gregoire has fought for women's health care funding.
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