Two new ordinances in Seattle, Washington could punish pro-life advocates for offering pregnancy and parenting resources to women outside abortion facilities.
Encouraging pregnant mothers to seek alternatives to abortion potentially could be considered “interfering with health care” under new legislation that the Seattle City Council unanimously passed Tuesday.
The Seattle Times reports the council approved the two pro-abortion ordinances in an 8-0 vote after expressing outrage that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.
Washington state has some of the most pro-abortion laws in the world, allowing unborn babies to be aborted for basically any reason, forcing taxpayers to pay for them and not requiring a parent’s consent for an underage girl to have an abortion.
However, Seattle City Councilmember Lisa Herbold said they felt the city needed to do more in response to the “crisis,” according to the report.
“For pregnant people, and the people who love them, this is the big one, the catastrophic earthquake that we’ve always known is coming,” Herbold said. “And it’s the expected four fold increase in people seeking abortions in Washington state that can be thought of as the tidal wave created by the earthquake that’s headed our way.”
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One ordinance prohibits discrimination against anyone based on “pregnancy outcomes,” and the other authorizes the city attorney to prosecute anyone who “interferes” with “health care” facilities or providers, meaning abortion.
Here’s more from the report:
The discrimination bill allows the city’s Office of Civil Rights to investigate alleged discrimination based on pregnancy outcomes as it would discrimination based on race, religion, sex, sexuality or other protected classes, while the interference bill recognizes an existing state law and allows the city to prosecute interference with any health care — including abortions and gender-affirming care which are often protested — as a misdemeanor.
Both [ordinances] … will got into effect 30 days after they are signed by the mayor.
The anti-discrimination ordinance claims to protect “human rights,” but it ignores the human rights of babies in the womb who are killed in abortions. New abortion data confirms that most unborn babies are aborted for purely elective reasons, while only 0.7 percent are done in cases of rape, incest or threats to the mother’s life.
In 2020, 16,050 unborn babies were aborted in Washington state, according to state health department statistics.
Since Roe in 1973, more than 63 million unborn babies and hundreds of mothers have died in supposedly “safe,” legal abortions. The infamous ruling forced states to legalize abortions for any reason up to viability and allowed abortions for any reason up to birth.
Now, states are starting to protect unborn babies from abortion again.
In the historic Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health ruling in June, the Supreme Court overturned Roe and allowed states to protect unborn babies from abortion again. Currently, 15 states protect unborn babies by limiting or banning abortions. As a result, approximately 156,000 unborn babies are being saved, according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute.
