PORT TOWNSEND — A group formed to push for abortion services in East Jefferson County doesn’t care about the reasons the service isn’t provided in the county now.
They just want a change.
“Abortion needs to be available in Jefferson County,” said Julie Jamon of Port Townsend at a strategy meeting at Manresa Castle on Thursday night.
“I can’t believe we are still talking about this in the 21st century.”
County residents plan to attend the next Jefferson Healthcare hospital commissioners’ meeting — set for 2 p.m. March 24 in the hospital auditorium, 834 Sheridan St., Port Townsend — and send emails to CEO Mike Glenn and commissioners to make their point.
The issue was prompted by a Feb. 18 letter addressed to the hospital board and CEO Mike Glenn from the Seattle office of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The letter accused the East Jefferson County hospital of being out of compliance with state law because it doesn’t perform abortions on-site.
Patients seeking abortions are referred to clinics in Port Angeles, Bremerton or Seattle, said Julia Danskin, a nurse with the Jefferson County Department of Public Health.
Hospital officials have said the lack of abortion services is not a matter of policy but rather of practicality.
They point to the number of abortion requests — 55 in 2013 — and say this low number makes it difficult for abortion providers to establish a presence in the county.
While Glenn has not yet formally responded to the ACLU, hospital officials are creating a task force to examine and discuss the issue, Kate Burke, the hospital’s marketing director, said Friday.
Thursday’s strategy meeting was attended by 30 people, including hospital commissioners Marie Dressler and Chuck Russell and a representative of the ACLU.
The gathering was a follow-up to a March 5 commissioners meeting where several people urged the hospital to offer pregnancy termination services in the wake of the ACLU letter.
The ACLU asked the hospital to change its policies and practices “to fulfill its obligations under the Reproductive Privacy Act.”
The ACLU was represented Thursday by Jane Witcher of Port Townsend, who once served as an attorney for the group.
“Our position is a simple one: that Washington law requires any public hospital that provides a full range of maternity services, which our hospital does, that it also must provide a full range of pregnancy-termination services,” Witcher said.
In the letter to Jefferson Healthcare, the ACLU cites an August 2013 state attorney general opinion.
The opinion says state law requires a public hospital that provides maternity care service or information to also provide “substantially equivalent benefits, services or information” regarding contraception and abortion.
“We express no opinion on exactly how hospital districts may comply with this requirement,” the attorney general’s opinion says.
The ACLU is disputing the idea that referring patients off-site for abortions is substantially equivalent to the maternity care the hospital offers.
“We think this is a problem that is solvable short of litigation,” Witcher said Thursday. “Nobody wants that.
“We think the resources of the hospital ought to be going into providing services including pregnancy termination for the women who want it.”
Dressler explained the hospital’s position.
“If we offer a service, it’s important that we do it in the very safest way and with the highest quality,” she said.
“If someone is messing around with my uterus, I want them to be doing those procedures every day and several times a day.
“I don’t want someone taking care of me who doesn’t do it on a regular basis.”
Witcher told the group it can promote awareness and perhaps bring pressure on the hospital.
“We should take a lot of the frustration and anger in this room and try to be forward-looking,” she said. “The hospital has to want to change.”
Said Russell: “When you say that you want to get the hospital on board, it assumes they are not on board, and that’s not necessarily true.
“You are going to accomplish a lot more by not being angry and not being confrontational.”
According to the state Department of Health’s statistics for 2013, Jefferson County had the second highest per capita rate of abortions in the state, with 15.5 out of 1,000 women between 14 and 44 opting for the procedure.
The highest rate was Pierce County, with 16.8 per 1,000, or 2,794 abortions. Neighboring Clallam County, with an 11.8-per-1,000 rate and 121 abortions, came in 11th.
The ACLU also sent letters of concern to Whidbey General Hospital in Coupeville and Mason General Hospital in Shelton, and filed a lawsuit against Skagit Valley Hospital.
Neither Olympic Medical Center in Port Angeles nor Forks Community Hospital — the other two hospitals on the North Olympic Peninsula — received letters from the ACLU.
Hospital officials plan to meet with ACLU representatives the week of March 23, Burke said.
Also, hospital officials are creating a reproductive services task force composed of health care providers to review services and perhaps recommend they be expanded, she added.
“The task force will base its recommendations on community need and our ability to provide any new service in a safe, high-quality, compassionate and sustainable manner,” she said.
Glenn plans to talk about these issues March 24.
That meeting will include a public comment period for members of the public, and the strategy group discussed how the group should approach the board: with one spokesman delivering a crafted message or several people addressing commissioners.
A petition drive also was discussed.
Rick Jahnke of Port Townsend said the group should wait for the hospital’s response to the ACLU.
“It may be ‘We agree with you there’s a need and we are working toward providing that,’” he said, so “you don’t really need to go down that route.”
Said Witcher: “We don’t care why they change their policy, whether it is a matter of law or a matter of policy.
“We just want those services to be available.”
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
