Thank you for being here this morning.
Today I'm very excited to sign four bills related to reproductive health and reproductive justice.
I'm joined by community members and leaders who have been advocating fiercely in this space and I'm very proud to stand united with them.
I'll introduce some of them more specifically in a few moments.
Now ultimately these bills reflect our efforts as a city.
They're based on safety.
We want every woman and person seeking an abortion to be able to make their decisions to seek reproductive justice with safety.
Quite honestly, it's as simple as that, but the work is a little harder to actually implement.
With that said, I would like to acknowledge other events that occurred over the weekend that involved safety.
We had a rash of shootings over the weekend, as many of you know, including one where a 14-year-old girl was injured and another where a man was killed near Cal Anderson Park.
We had someone killed by a light rail train on Sunday at Mount Baker Station.
While details on all of these matters are still being investigated, we know that these kinds of tragedies are, quite frankly, just unacceptable in the city of Seattle and in this country.
In all these instances, I first want to express my heartfelt sympathy to the families, friends, and communities that are impacted.
Safety is my, as mayor, my core charter responsibility, and Seattle must be a place that's safe.
That matters when you enjoy a park, when you take light rail, and particularly, as we are here to talk about this morning, when you are seeking reproductive care.
This must be a city where safety is an inherent right.
So today we're taking steps to ensure abortion and reproductive health care is safe and accessible to residents and visitors.
I'm grateful and proud to be joined by council members Lisa Herbold and Tammy Morales, as well by leaders in the reproductive rights space who recognize how critical a moment this is in our city in our state and in our country.
I want also to thank Council Member Swann, who's not here today, but who sponsored legislation we will sign as well.
Before the Supreme Court overturned Roe, we recognized immediately how that decision could impact and threaten the health of women throughout Seattle, the Pacific Northwest, and indeed in this entire country.
This is, we believe, fundamentally dangerous and bad policy.
Our response collectively, and I emphasize collectively, it wasn't just the city council, it wasn't just the mayor, our collective community response was based on action and working together to put and memorialize in the form of legislation bills to ensure reproductive freedom here in Seattle.
It was based on equity and an understanding that often the women most likely to be impacted are women of color.
i'll just talk lightly about these important bills and i think the council members may explain uh...
them in a little more detail the council bill one two zero three seven adds people who have received or are seeking abortions as a protected class, therefore ensuring that their civil rights are protected under our code.
Council Bill 120376 creates a misdemeanor charge for people who encroach on individuals seeking abortions or gender-affirming care.
Both of those bills were sponsored by Council Members Morales and Herbold.
Council Bill 120375 established Seattle as a sanctuary city for those seeking abortion care and prevents pursuit of out-of-state warrants related to abortions by Seattle police.
That was sponsored by Council Member Swant.
And Council Bill 120366's legislation, and thank you for the Council for passing that bill, was part of our supplemental budget where we are appropriating $250,000 to fund expanded access to reproductive health care by making an investment in Northwest Abortion Access Fund.
You'll hear from Ms. Saxton in a few moments.
Before I relinquish the microphone, to leaders that are standing with me, we have to fully understand that this is a united commitment to maintain and expand our city's embrace of some of our core values that I think make Seattle very special.
Our fight for privacy, freedom, and our shared values based on love, empathy, sympathy, all of the compassion when women are seeking reproductive justice.
So I'm going to introduce Councilmember Tammy Morales, and again, I'm very proud of the council's work in this space, and she'll say a few words.
Councilmember Tammy Morales.
Good morning, everyone.
Thank you, Mayor Harrell.
And thank you to all of the advocates who are here with us today.
Really excited that we have had the opportunity to work closely with all of them.
And I'm sorry that it is under these particular circumstances, but it's important that we begin the work of making sure that people in Seattle are protected.
I'm Tammy Morales, I represent District 2 from Chinatown International District down to Rainier Beach.
I also serve as the Vice Chair of the Seattle-King County Board of Health.
So I want to thank everyone for joining us today and thank Mayor Harrell for his partnership and his commitment to making sure that we have access to abortion and to reproductive care in the city.
We're joined by community partners who helped shape the legislation we're being signed today, that we're signing today.
And I especially want to thank Legal Voice, Planned Parenthood, Pro-Choice Washington, as well as my colleague, Council Member Lisa Herbold.
It's an honor to continue partnering on this historic moment and this very important issue.
On another note, I took office approximately 50 days before the pandemic started.
So this is my first bill signing ceremony as a council member.
So thank you, Mayor Howell.
And I do want to thank everybody for joining us here today.
On June 24th, the Supreme Court disregarded 50 years of precedence and achieved their agenda to take away a person's right to choose by forcing people to give birth against their will.
And I want to be clear, this is the first time in our country's history that a fundamental right has been taken away from our countrymen and people.
This is no longer a theoretical exercise.
We see assaults on our courts on marginalized communities.
We see the reduction of rights.
And every level of government has a vital role to play in ensuring bodily autonomy for our neighbors and ensuring that we all have access to self-determination.
Recently, the National Institute for Reproductive Health released a local reproductive freedom index.
that reported on 50 U.S. cities.
And one of the items that were assessed in the index was anti-discrimination legislation.
Overall, Seattle received only three out of five stars in the report.
So we know that as a city and as a council, discrimination continues to exist in this city, and we know that we still have a lot of work to do to make sure that people's rights are protected.
This is a tremendous first step today, signing these bills to protect people who are seeking to obtain a safe medical procedure, a safe legal medical procedure.
And we're living in real time as the ongoing impacts to the Supreme Court's decision continue to become obvious to us.
We have to be bold and courageous and stand for our values during this pivotal time.
While we know that here in Seattle and in Washington, we have the secure right to abortion, too many across the country do not.
Just this past week, Idaho outlawed abortions after six weeks.
We anticipate a 300% influx of people seeking abortion care in Seattle, so we have to add every tool in our tool belt to ensure that healthcare access is protected for Seattleites and for all those who will be coming to seek care.
From a municipal standpoint, these bills create protections that we can put in place to extend care to people who will be crossing state lines as they seek care in our city.
While it may be unlikely that we'll see abortion restrictions in the state of Washington, it is probable that disparate state-level legislative actions will create confusion about the protections that are afforded to our neighbors or about the restrictions that are applicable in any given case.
So these bills are intended to provide clarity about actions that the city would take in specific situations.
As Mayor Harrell mentioned, Council Bill 120374 adds protections for people who are seeking or have received abortions, creates a protected class for them.
Council Bill 120376 creates a misdemeanor charge for people who encroach on individuals seeking abortion or gender-affirming care.
I want to thank again Councilmember Herbold and her staff for working together on this legislation since the Supreme Court's draft opinion was leaked.
These two bills are just the beginning of protections that we have, both of us have been working on in our offices.
With my colleagues' support, I'm hoping that we will also soon pass legislation that would regulate crisis pregnancy centers in Seattle.
Crisis Pregnancy Centers are conservative Christian organizations that work to persuade pregnant people against having abortions.
They often appear to operate as an abortion clinic that provides emergency contraception or referral to those services, but they do not actually provide this information once a patient enters, instead redirecting them to adoption or other alternatives.
Our legislation would work to ensure that these facilities cannot make public statements that are false or misleading by creating penalties for engaging in deceptive practices.
And we're modeling this legislation on an ordinance in San Francisco, where they've been very successful in upholding this ordinance.
So as electeds, it's important that we come together, that we organize to ensure that everyone has their fundamental right to privacy.
and the right to decide what to do with their own bodies.
I'm proud to stand firm alongside my colleagues and community advocates today and declare that Seattle is a city where we strengthen existing protections and we create systems of support for people who are seeking abortion care.
The fight for reproductive justice will continue and I'll be supporting these fights at every level that I can.
Thank you very much for being here today and I will hand it over to my colleague, Council Member Lisa Herbold.
Good morning.
Thank you both Mayor Harrell, Council Member Morales.
Everyone in Seattle has heard of the big one, the catastrophic earthquake that will occur at any moment.
And the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs is an earthquake.
It's the big one.
It's impact on the ability of pregnant people to receive safe and medically sound health care and make extremely personal decisions that will affect the entire course of their lives and that of their loved ones.
Like the earthquake that we know is coming, Dobbs will also create a tidal wave.
in the form of an influx of medical refugees who live in states where they are suddenly unable to get the health care that they need and they're forced to cross state lines in search of it.
Experts expect Washington state to see a four-fold increase in people seeking abortions here, a tidal wave that is gathering force as we speak And here in Seattle, we must be ready for them and meet them with the care and protection that is lacking in their home states.
The reality is that pregnant people, whether residents of Seattle or these medical refugees from further afield, don't have the luxury of time to make these difficult decisions.
And we know that reproductive healthcare delayed is almost always more difficult, more expensive, and more risky.
I thank Mayor Harrell for answering the Council's call to appropriate $250,000 this year for the Northwest Abortion Access Fund, which will smooth the way and provide essential care for the tidal wave of medical refugees forced to travel here for reproductive care.
I thank Councilmember Morales and her staff and Christina Kotsoubas in my office for working hard to identify early, savvy regulatory fixes.
that we are celebrating here today.
I also want to recognize that even though Council Member Sawant can't be here together, her bill that recognizes that enforcement of the laws of other states, including cooperation with law enforcement from other states in seeking warrants, is legislation that other cities across the country have similarly adopted from New Orleans, Boise, Dayton, Atlanta, Athens, Nashville, Austin, Ithaca, and Washington, D.C. These are other cities and other jurisdictions that have either made the enforcement of these laws the lowest law enforcement priority for their law enforcement agencies or otherwise identified their cities as sanctuary cities.
I pledge that I will continue to aggressively seek out ways to protect and expand abortion access for everyone who seeks unbiased health care here in Seattle.
As Councilmember Morales referenced, the abortion crisis clinics, a similar but unique and equally harmful policy if not addressed, relates specifically to patients who are being cared in religiously affiliated healthcare facilities, which comprise an estimated half of our hospital beds.
Again, these are different than crisis centers, they're hospitals.
These hospitals are allowed to deny reproductive health care to their patients due to religious bias, and no one is ever required to tell the patient that they're getting denied care or that there's a procedure that could help them if only they'd gone to an unbiased provider.
Some religiously affiliated hospitals will provide procedures to save a pregnant person's life, but only when it's in immediate risk, which is not a clear line.
The result is that some patients are literally sent home to wait.
They wait to get sicker, they wait until the pain is worse, and they wait until the highest risk and their life is in danger.
And no one, again, is required to tell them they could get treated and taken care of immediately if they went to a different facility.
Our state requires hospitals to post information online about the reproductive, gender-affirming, and life-of-end services that are and are not available there, but they're not required to give that information, to hand that information over to their patients.
I want that information in patients' hands when they most need it, when they're making appointments and showing up for emergent care.
There will be so many more emerging needs as medical refugees arrive and as opponents of reproductive justice attempt to find ways to stop pregnant people from getting the health care they deserve.
I'll continue working with all of our incredible local advocates and providers on the front lines, public health, and our Board of Health to identify and address needs as they emerge.
Many thanks to Legal Voice, Pro-Choice Washington, and Planned Parenthood Alliance advocates.
Lastly, I want to make abundantly clear that abortion remains safe and legal here in Seattle and in Washington State.
There's so much disinformation right now.
I will continue saying and fighting to ensure that anyone seeking unbiased reproductive health care can find it here.
Thank you.
Next, we'll hear from Amanda Saxon from the Northwest Abortion Access Fund.
Amanda.
Morning, everyone.
My name's Amanda Saxton, they, them pronouns.
I am here with my fellow board member, Cindy Wilson, who uses she, her pronouns on behalf of the Northwest Abortion Access Fund.
First, I want to extend a large thank you to all of our city leadership, especially Mayor Harrell and council members Herbold and Morales for showing up and investing in Seattle's local abortion fund, especially at such a critical moment in time.
We look forward to building a partnership that will help us fulfill our mission of funding abortion and breaking down barriers to access in the Northwest.
For those that might not know, the Northwest Abortion Access Fund serves Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.
We've helped ensure access to abortion care since the mid-1990s by sending money directly to clinics and helping people get to and from their appointments safely.
This can mean providing things like plane tickets, hotel to stay in, childcare costs, and more.
We understand exactly how important these pieces of legislation are in this political moment.
Nearly half of funding provided by the Northwest Abortion Access Fund in 2021 went to callers from Idaho, a state that's currently set to make nearly all abortion illegal as of August 25th.
Abortion bans in other states will continue to create a heavy impact on local clinics and resources due to the influx of people receiving or in need of care.
This is especially true given that Seattle continues to show that we believe in making abortion accessible.
Idahoans and the many others that will be forced to travel for abortion care should not have to worry about being arrested or harassed while doing so.
And Seattle's city leadership has taken steps to prevent that.
Additionally, providing direct investment in the Northwest Abortion Access Fund will allow us to ease the financial burden of people who are seeking care, as well as compensating our local clinics for providing that care.
We've already seen the impact of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
We've assisted nearly three times the amount of callers since the Supreme Court decision happened than we did in the same time frame in 2021. Abortion funds will continue to provide compassionate care and resources needed to help ensure all individuals can access abortion regardless of where they live, their demographics, and their income.
Thanks.
Before we actually do the formal bill signing, Council Member Morales made a point I wanted to double down on.
She thanked her staff for the work that was done in this space for her.
As a former council member, I know the staffs did all the work, so.
That's where the magic happens, so we'd be derelict in our duties if we didn't thank the staff for this work.
Also, I think it was mentioned, but I just want to make sure that I bring recognition to the many groups here.
There are more that are listed here, but again, we have Legal Voice, Pro-Choice Washington, Planned Parenthood, Alliance Advocates, the Seattle Women's Commission, as we heard from Amanda, the Northwest Abortion Access Fund, and the Washington, is it the Association of Immigrant and Solidarity Network, I might have messed that one up a little bit, WAISN.
So, and again, there are many organizations, people who can join us that are part of this united work we're doing together.
Thank you very much.
So, before I take some Q&A, we're going to do the formal bill signing, and let's do it.
And like council members said...
Make sure there's no typos.
Okay, we'll take some Q&A.
the CPC bill that you might propose and kind of what it would look like.
San Francisco's, I think, regulates false advertising.
Is that?
That's right.
Yeah.
Is that kind of the outline of what you're thinking about?
Exactly.
And it did pass out of my committee on Monday, so it'll be before full council, I think, September 6th.
Is that right, Alexis?
Friday in the September 6th.
Yes, okay.
But yes, the idea is to prohibit false advertising for the kinds of services that are actually provided inside.
And then another piece of what we're trying to do is address the digital privacy issues, because what a lot of these, and Kim can probably speak closer to this than I can, but a lot of the issues that we are also finding is that because these entities don't have licensed medical providers in them and they are collecting a lot of health information from people as they come in the door, they aren't required to, there's no privacy protection required because these are medical facilities that are taking information and so they are using that as sort of The potential is that they can use that information to track who is seeking abortion care, and this is particularly dangerous for people who might be coming from states where this is illegal now.
So it's trying to address both of those things.
Well, it's hard to know because they change their signs, they change their websites, they aren't totally clear.
We are estimating right now that there are two or three, including a mobile clinic that operates in South Seattle.
But I don't know if anybody else can.
There's two that we know of, and about 50 across Washington State.
So it is within, oh my gosh, I'm forgetting 10 feet, 8 feet.
of somebody who is trying to enter the clinic or harassing a provider who is going into the clinic.
So the issue really is trying to create a safe buffer for the people who are going in.
I'm sure we've all seen what happens in Planned Parenthood and other service providers.
As somebody who grew up in Texas, this was something that was a regular event, people harassing, demonstrating, So we can expect that this is going to be happening and we just want to make sure that there are the people who are going to be using those services or providing those services are protected.
I have a question for Mayor O'Hara about public safety.
Is there anything- Council Member Morales was on a roll here.
Let her take some questions.
Go ahead.
Are you able to say anything tangible your office is doing in response to gun violence?
Yeah.
You know the the answers fairly simple in nature.
We have too many guns out there and too many guns in the wrong hands.
So as we continue to look at non-police responses with community-based organizations, with solutions that are coming from the community, dealing with communities that are dealing with trauma, we'll continue to do the upstream work.
We think that's going to be very meaningful.
We also are concerned ourselves with the 5 or 10-year picture in this city and in this country, and that's why I push so hard for exemption from RCW 9.41.290, which is a state exemption law where I think cities should have some flexibility in how they regulate guns and gun safety.
We'd like more police responses, police presence, the right kind of police, the right number of police, culturally competent police, and that's what my recruitment and retention plan is designed to achieve.
So again, we look at short-term solutions and long-term solutions, and of course, this is facing our country, not just Seattle.
And we hope to be a leader in this space, because as I said in my remarks on reproductive justice, that this is my core responsibility is to keep everyone safe.
Yes, please.
Please.
I just want to say a couple words about some investments that the city has made into work that King County is doing through the Regional Peacekeepers Collective.
In particular, there is a hospital-based program that intervenes.
with both the victims and the perpetrators as well as their families of gun violence.
And they're seeing a lot of promising results from the investments in those services with the particular cohort that they work with.
But we're seeing gun violence in an older population than the population that this hospital-based program works with.
And so we're really looking at ways to expand that particular intervention to those who are over 25 years old.
And I think we'll be having some conversations within the context of our upcoming budget discussions as well about that.
In light of this weekend's violence, you had 80 shell casings at the T-Mobile shooting by the sports bar.
Some are saying Seattle is, the phrase is, sun's out, guns out.
Are you encouraging the police department to maybe increase patrols on a nightly basis when it's warmer weather?
So typically, I don't discuss our tactical decisions.
The way we go about it is we look at the data.
Quite frankly, I've spent a lot of weekend at police precincts talking to the officers and the captains.
And so we look at everything on a day-to-day basis.
I listen to tactical decisions from those who are experts in this space.
As you well know, we are short officers.
And so to the extent I increase presence in one area, it may be a deficient presence in another area.
But to answer your question directly, we'll consider everything to keep this city safe.
And we literally meet daily, have daily conversations on what makes sense to keep everyone safe.
I would also add that, you know, Seattle is no exception to what's happening in this country.
And I know we live here, we're concerned ourselves around Seattle, but if you read the newspapers, you'll see that there were shootings all over this country that's occurring, and this is a bad thing.
Go ahead, Matt.
Yeah.
So, as I said, one reason why I don't openly talk about tactical decisions, because those often committing crimes are listening to the words that I say.
We're very smart in our approach.
We're very constitutional in our approach.
So I think it's totally inappropriate for the mayor of this city to constantly talk about tactical decisions.
That's why I talk about values.
And I'm very, and I emphasize that, of the kind of officer that I want when I'm having presence.
I'll stop there.
Okay, I think we're all good on the questions.
I want to thank everyone for being here.