Abortion legislation splits the parties in Oregon House

By PETER WONG
Oregon Capital Bureau

Differences between majority Democrats and minority Republicans have come to the surface as the Oregon House moves to a vote on legislation that builds on Oregon’s 2017 law ensuring access to abortion and other reproductive and gender-affirming health care.

Every Democrat on the joint budget committee voted Thursday to send House Bill 2002 for a vote of the full House — and every Republican, including its leaders in both chambers, voted against it.

The bill emerged from a work group convened last year by House Speaker Dan Rayfield, D-Corvallis, before the U.S. Supreme Court officially overturned abortion as a federal constitutional right granted by the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and returned the issue to states. But Rayfield did so after a draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito leaked.

Oregon lawmakers removed criminal penalties for abortion in 1969 — four years before the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion — and voters rejected six ballot initiatives between 1978 and 2018 to restrict abortion or ban public funding. Oregon began public funding of abortions in 1977, the year after Congress put most abortions off-limits for federal funds.

House Majority Whip Andrea Valderrama, a Democrat from East Portland, will be the floor manager for HB 2002 when it comes up for a vote in late April or early May. She also sits on the budget committee. Though Republican lawmakers and governors in other states have moved to restrict or ban abortions, Democratic lawmakers have gone the other way — and Valderrama said that is because Oregonians have weighed in.

“Time and time again, Oregonians have made this a priority on our ballots, in emails and phone calls,” Valderrama said after the committee vote. “This bill tells Oregonians we are listening. It is the result of work that more than 80 Oregon stakeholders have put in to reaffirm what Oregonians have told us time and time again.”

What the bill does

Among other things, the bill would create a new crime of interference with a health care facility, set maximum penalties of 364 days in jail — one day short of a felony qualifying for state prison — and a fine of $6,250, and empower individuals to go to court to enforce their rights under the law.

It also says this: ”Every individual has a fundamental right to make decisions about the individual’s reproductive health, including the right to make decisions about the individual’s reproductive health care, to use or refuse contraception, to continue the individual’s pregnancy and give birth or to terminate the individual’s pregnancy.”

It also provides legal protection for medical providers who carry out procedures that are allowed under Oregon law.

It also safeguards gender-affirming health care. Sen. Elizabeth Steiner — a Democrat from Northwest Portland who is budget co-chair and a family practice physician — said surgery is excluded from such health care and is performed on people 18 and older.

The legislation was unveiled March 20, when the House Committee on Behavioral Health and Health Care first heard it. It adds to the Reproductive Health Equity Act that lawmakers passed in 2017 — with all but one Democrat (John Lively of Springfield) in support and all Republicans opposed — and signed by Democratic Gov. Kate Brown.

Most of the comments during the budget committee discussion came from dissenting Republicans.

“We all have our own set of beliefs — and I never choose to second-guess anyone’s beliefs,” Rep. Greg Smith of Heppner, currently the longest serving House member at 22 years and a staunch opponent of abortion, said.

Senate Republican Leader Tim Knopp of Bend, also a staunch opponent of abortion, complained on two fronts.

He said the legislation lacks any requirement for notice to a minor’s parents about abortion or related health care. In 1999, when Knopp was a first-term member of the House, Republican legislative majorities passed such a requirement, but Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber, a physician, vetoed it. Republicans did not attempt to override his veto. A similar attempt failed in 1995 when a Republican Senate passed it, but several Republicans — including then-Speaker Bev Clarno — sided with Democrats to defeat it.

Steiner said that in her experience, few minors receive such care without parents or guardians being aware of it — though it does happen.

“Only if I were 100% convinced that it was dangerous for that child to inform parents that I would feel comfortable not informing them,” she said. “I would urge that young person to give me consent to contact their parents.”

Procedural objection

Knopp also objected on procedural grounds. Under a longstanding rule, once a policy bill goes through the joint budget committee — which is supposed to review it only for its fiscal implications — and is passed by one chamber, the bill normally gets only an up-or-down vote in the second chamber, unlike most bills that go through the committee process again.

“I am pissed that the Senate is not going to get a chance to hear this,” Knopp said, echoing comments by other Republican senators.

Steiner said she led one failed attempt to resolve the procedural issue — Republicans used the budget committee bypass themselves when they held legislative majorities from 1995 until 2003 — and is willing to try again after the 2023 session concludes.

“But it should be no surprise to anybody that we are running this bill. This has been a conversation that has been happening in this state since the Dobbs decision,” she said.

“I do not think the outcome will be any different, frankly, whether we delay this or not.”