In secret, she fled the South to get an abortion in WA
She planned to tell almost no one that she was flying to Seattle for an abortion. Still, the Texas woman wondered: Would someone show up at her door?
www.seattletimes.com
Feb. 26, 2023 at 6:00 am Updated Feb. 26, 2023 at 1:43 pm
(Frank Mina / The Seattle Times)
By Nina Shapiro
Seattle Times staff reporter
The Texas woman’s apartment has thin walls. Could neighbors hear her talking about her imminent flight to Washington for an abortion? Or could data from her phone be tracked, revealing she had searched for a way to end her pregnancy?
“And then, like, all of a sudden somebody shows up at my door.”
“Maybe that’s a little bit extreme,” the woman, who agreed to be identified only by the initial A., said of her imagined scenario. “But also, maybe nooot?” She drew out the word as she considered the question aloud.
After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June, a raft of states banned abortion, prompting residents seeking to terminate pregnancies to travel elsewhere — sometimes far away. An increasing number of abortion patients from the South, particularly Texas, are now coming to Washington.
Secrecy, fear and confusion often accompany them at a time that the legal landscape is changing day by day, with hundreds of bills pending in state legislatures around the country. Most seek to restrict abortion but some, as in Washington, aim to strengthen access and protect providers and patients arriving from other states.
Dr. Erin Berry, Washington medical director for the Seattle-based Planned Parenthood affiliate, said out-of-state patients ask what they can say back home about their Washington abortions. “Can I tell my OB-GYN?”
Berry said she tells them what they are doing is legal. Washington’s legally established right to an abortion applies because “you’re located here and I’m located here.” Texas laws, she adds for patients from there, “don’t have control over us.”
Her response corresponds to how Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson and most legal experts interpret current law.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion overturning Roe that he believes the constitutional right to interstate travel doesn’t allow individual states to bar their residents from traveling elsewhere to get abortions. But that has yet to be tested in court.
Setting up legal battles that could wind up before Kavanaugh and his colleagues, some anti-abortion activists and lawmakers have proposed laws intending to block “abortion tourism” or “trafficking” — the latter what an Idaho bill calls helping a minor cross state lines for an abortion. Most bills around the country focus on providers or so-called aiders and abettors.
“It’s hard for anyone to keep up,” Berry said, and patients are unsure if they could be put in jeopardy. “The reality is, I think, all of us are unsure… You do feel there’s a little bit of a target on your back.”
Anticipating interstate strife, Ferguson last week announced several local law firms will participate in a free legal service for those facing prosecution or lawsuits related to abortion. And Democratic lawmakers have proposed a “shield law” that would ensure abortion-related warrants, subpoenas and other legal maneuvers from outside the state get no traction in Washington.
Those measures intend to help put at ease the growing number of people seeking abortions here, though the state’s increase in out-of-state patients hasn’t shot up as starkly as expected.
After Roe fell, the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights research organization, predicted Washington could see a 385% increase in out-of-state abortion patients. That has not yet materialized.
“I personally have always been saying it’s not going to be a huge wave,” said Mercedes Sanchez, a spokesperson for Cedar River Clinics, which has reproductive health facilities in the Seattle-Tacoma area and Yakima. “Instead, it’s going to be like a slowly rising flood. And I think that’s what we’re seeing.”
Predictably, patients from nearby Idaho, where abortion is banned, are coming to Washington. The Spokane-based Planned Parenthood affiliate, which operates clinics closest to the Idaho border, got 75% more Idaho patients this past January than it did in January 2022, according to spokesperson Paul Dillon.