Works In Progress - October 2007 - The Fight to Suppress Reproductive Rights Heats Up: Tides Turn as Birth Control Prices Rise, Stormans Supporters Get Cruel

The continued right to reproductive freedom is looking bleaker and bleaker for women in the United States. Buoyed by recent victories both locally and nationally, the anti-choice movement is turning up the heat, with organized, well-funded efforts to suppress not only a woman’s right to abortion, but to prevent everyone’s access to birth control.

As college women return to campuses across the country this fall, they are finding that the prescription birth control pills they were previously able to obtain from campus health services for a few dollars a month have risen in price over 200%, now often costing more than $40 a month – a difficult sum for students on a tight budget. This sharp increase is due to the Budget Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which went into effect in January 2007, and cut deeply into drug discounts for colleges and universities.

Access to birth control is also being blocked through increasingly well organized “pro-life” vigils outside of Planned Parenthood clinics throughout the country. Locally, “Show the Truth” fanatics spend long hours near the Planned Parenthood on Legion Way, displaying grisly signs with photos of dismembered fetuses, despite the fact that no late-term abortions are performed at the clinic.

Pro-choice advocates have countered with signs supporting Planned Parenthood, but there’s no telling how many people seeking affordable birth control, a large proportion of them low-income, have been deterred from obtaining them by all the commotion.

One woman reported that the anti-choice demonstrators harassed her as she went to pick up some tax forms at the IRS office, which is housed in the same building.

Harassment outside of Planned Parenthood clinics will increase in the near future, not only in Olympia but in the entire country, as an organization called 40 Days for Life launches a 40-day vigil on September 26. Opponents of reproductive rights plan to pray and fast outside of clinics in 89 cities, including Olympia. Although their website claims that “The vigil is peaceful; participants sign a ‘Statement of Peace’ with a pledge that they will conduct themselves in a Christian manner,” recent conduct on the part of rabid anti-choice demonstrators makes that seem unlikely.

At a recent rally outside of Ralph’s, self-proclaimed Stormans supporters showed up and spent an hour and a half shouting their thanks to Ralph’s shoppers, and yelling abuse at the boycott advocates, who included state representative Brendan Williams, as they stood peacefully holding picket signs. Among other things, the anti-choicers made racial slurs against boycotters, told a 14-year-old girl that “your mother is teaching you to be a whore,” and asked a visibly pregnant boycott supporter why she didn’t “just scrape this one out.” One anti-choice demonstrator ignored her five-year-old son as he stood in the street and threw rocks at cars – she was too busy talking on her cell phone and shouting at pro-choice picketers. (Apparently, providing adequate care for children who are already born is not on the “pro-life” agenda.) As pro-choice demonstrator Carolyn La Fond, who has spent many hours picketing in front of both Ralph’s and Planned Parenthood, points out, it’s ironic that such “venomous attacks are coming from these assemblies of God.”

La Fond is quick to point out that many church members are supportive of a woman’s right to control her own body. She expressed a hope that more liberal and moderate congregations would “speak up and say we are the mainstream Christians, not the Westwood Baptists and the Church of Living Water.”

Consumer action against Ralph’s, in the form of picketing and boycotting, is becoming increasingly important as legal recourse is blocked by bureaucratic timidity and conservative jurists.

The Washington State Board of Pharmacy, under pressure by a lawsuit filed by Stormans Inc. against the Board as well as the state Human Rights Commission, closed nine complaints against Ralph’s Pharmacy without taking disciplinary action, a disappointment for local activists. With 14 additional complaints against Ralph’s recently filed, the outlook for these complaints is better since tighter regulations regarding stocking and dispensing drugs (including emergency contraception) were enacted in July 2007 after the initial complaints were filed. However, the complaint process is slow, and the lawsuit against the state may complicate matters. Furthermore, the lawsuit is being heard in federal court by Justice Ronald C. Leighton, who was appointed by George W. Bush; judges appointed by “Bush Two” tend to be more conservative even than Reagan and “Bush One” appointees.

A large pro-choice demonstration is being planned for Friday, Oct. 12, outside of Planned Parenthood on Legion Way, from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. For upcoming pickets outside of Ralph’s, please checkout the website http://www.planboly.org.

Janet Blanding is a pro-choice single mother and birth control advocate living in Olympia.