By Jennifer Weddermann, University Place
The unbridled misogyny we’ve seen from Donald Trump this election cycle has exposed an ugly truth about anti-choice politicians at every level: They don’t just want to restrict women’s right to control when and whether they have children, they’re actively anti-woman, with attitudes toward women’s rights that were out of date in the last century and have no place in this one.
University Place state Rep. Steve O’Ban is one of the most outspoken opponents of women’s reproductive freedom in the senate. This year, as vice-chairman of the senate law and justice committee, he helped to push through a bill that would have banned so-called “sex-selective” abortions, legislation that was based on the racist assumption that Asian American families disproportionately abort female fetuses. At a hearing on that proposal, O’Ban asked leading questions to suggest that an Indian American doctor testifying in favor of the bill actually supported this practice!
O’Ban has also led efforts to prevent women from accessing birth control. As an attorney, O’Ban represented Storman’s Pharmacy in Storman’s v. Washington, where he argued that pharmacists should be allowed to refuse to fill contraceptive prescriptions if they object to birth control on religious grounds.
In this pivotal election year, we need a representative who will stand with women, not stand in our way. We need to expand the Senate’s slim pro-choice majority, not reelect leaders from the Trump Party, like O’Ban, who actively oppose women’s reproductive freedom and economic equality.