Rantz: Foolish Seattle Council wants women seeking abortions to be a ‘protected class’

The Seattle City Council is ready to pretend women seeking abortions must be a protected class. This is foolish virtue signaling at its most transparent.

Socialist councilmember Tammy Morales and far-left progressive councilmember Lisa Herbold will introduce legislation that turns women seeking abortion (or women who have had an abortion) into a protected class.

Not only is this unnecessary, and likely already protected, it demeans people who have actually suffered from discrimination in the city.

Useless, foolish legislation

After Roe v. Wade was overturned, Seattle activists struggled to be relevant.

Always up for a social justice fight, Seattle activists found themselves without an end goal. In Seattle, and all of Washington, abortion access is not under threat. It’s easier to get an abortion than a cup of coffee here. Local lawmakers will even pay for women to come from out of state to terminate their pregnancies.

So what are local activists to do? Signal their support of terminating pregnancies by treating women who seek or have received abortions as worthy of extraordinary protection.

“The idea is to create, as a protected class, people who are seeking abortions, especially because we anticipate that there will be a lot of people coming to Washington seeking care,” said Morales.

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Uhm, what?

The legislation adds protections for “an individual’s actual, potential, perceived, or alleged pregnancy outcomes.” Morales’ reasoning Morales is both ridiculous and wholly contrived.

“We want to make sure that they aren’t targeted by restaurants or hotels or any other sort of entity that they are visiting while they’re here seeking that care,” she said.

There is not a single hotel that asks pregnant women if they’re visiting the city for an abortion. There’s no restaurant that, before serving appetizers, makes sure it isn’t the child’s last meal before termination.

And, of course, no business inquires about one’s past or future access to abortion. A business won’t determine its willingness to steam clean your carpets or fix a leaky faucet based on an invasive questionnaire about pregnancy.

How demeaning this near-impossible scenario is to black people denied service over race, Jews targeted with swastikas on their synagogue, or gay women told by an employer that they won’t be hired because of who they married.

Protection likely already exists

Presumably, some of this is to pretend there could be local issues around the taxpayer-funded travel to the state for abortion.

King County Executive Dow Constantine and the King County Council committed $500,000 to pay for pregnant women to come here from states that ban abortion. The plan covers hotel fees. Is it possible that a hotel realizes the funds provided by the county to pay for abortions could go to the women staying at their hotels? I mean, a Republican did just win the Seattle City Attorney race, so technically anything is possible, however unlikely.

But under current anti-discrimination law, businesses likely couldn’t discriminate against future mothers-not-to-be anyway.

Seattle is one of the only cities in the country that considers one protected from ideological bigotry. The city does not enforce this, as leaders would be loathe to prosecute progressives who discriminate against conservatives.

But abortion is no longer just a “healthcare” issue. Abortion access is now subject to the political positions of state lawmakers. Supporting abortion — including supporting it by having one — is now inherently tied to a political ideology.

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Desperate for relevancy

Morales, Herbold, the city council and local activists are desperate for relevancy in the so-called fight for abortion access. But the partisan nature of these lawmakers, it’s not shocking. It’s an expected abuse of privilege to institutionalize their ideological beliefs.

But it’s telling that the council couldn’t even pretend to care about pregnant women who actually want to care for the life she created.

The Council is exclusively focusing on abortion services. But the bill would technically cover pregnant women who give birth, too. So why not even feign interest in protecting mothers-to-be? Because they’re not pro-choice; they’re pro-abortion.

Their interest in what they call “reproductive healthcare” only extends to women who terminate their pregnancies. It’s why they spend all their time on abortion, instead of on mothers who need support after they give birth.

“We are in scary times right now, and I am committed to making sure that we are doing everything we can as a region to provide the proper health information for those seeking abortions in this state and to make sure that they’re protected,” Morales told the Seattle Times.

We are not in scary times from the perspective of locals seeking to terminate pregnancies. But it’s certainly scarier that Morales is unwilling to even acknowledge the importance of health information for mothers who will give birth.

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