Abortion Debate In Full Swing Hearings, Rally Draw Legislators In Olympia
Conservative lawmakers believe they’re getting closer to approving restrictions on abortion, especially now that Republicans control the Legislature. But they’re concerned about the effects of incidents such as Thursday’s bombing of an Atlanta clinic.
“The bombing does not represent you or me or our belief in life. Let’s stand together against it,” U.S. Rep. Linda Smith, R-Wash., told hundreds of people who endured Friday’s steady rain and chilly temperatures to attend the 19th annual March for Life event at the Capitol.
“We have got to find a way to let these people who think they’re helping us by burning, bombing and violence know that they are hurting us,” said Lt. Gov. Brad Owen, a conservative Democrat who was sworn in Wednesday as the state’s second-in-command.
The rally, also attended by about 30 legislators, followed a House hearing on a bill that would outlaw late-term and so-called “partial-birth” abortions. No vote has been scheduled yet on HB1031, but members of the House Law and Justice Committee paid close attention as several women offered dramatic, emotional testimony about their experiences.
Tammy Watts, an Arizona woman who stood by President Clinton last summer as he vetoed a similar ban approved by Congress, described how she and her husband had found out seven months into her pregnancy that her baby would be born without eyes and with enlarged kidneys that already were failing.
When it became clear the baby would not live, they ended the pregnancy, a process Mrs. Watts described as “the most horrible experience” of her life, and one she’d rather not share with the government.
“It’s so important that we be able to make those decisions because we’re the only ones who can,” said Mrs. Watts, who’s pregnant again. “Until you’ve walked a mile in my shoes, don’t pretend to know what it’s like for me. And I won’t pretend to know what it’s like for someone else going through this.”
Jeannie Wallace French, a health-care professional from Chicago, offered a different perspective.
Pregnant with twins in 1993, Mrs. French learned during the fourth month that one of the fetuses had virtually no chance of survival because part of her brain was developing outside her skull. Rather than follow the doctor’s advice to abort, the Frenches decided to go ahead with the pregnancy.
Mary French died six hours after birth, and her heart valves were donated to two other infants in need of transplant surgery.
“Do we really want to be a nation that says a disabled life has no value?” Mrs. French said during the hearing, which was monitored by a State Patrol trooper due to security concerns following the Atlanta bombing.
The bill is sponsored by Rep. Mark Sterk, R-Spokane Valley. He said a “partial-birth” abortion involves a procedure in which a doctor pulls a fetus out by its legs using forceps, then uses surgical scissors to open a hole in the baby’s head and remove the brain through a catheter.
The state Health Department, which collects data on every abortion performed in Washington, knows of no physician in the state who performs that procedure.