County ordinance harasses Seattle pro-life clinics

The King County Board of Health in Seattle recently passed a rule, 10–1, requiring all pro-life pregnancy centers to post notices (in 48-point font and in ten different languages) stating: “This facility is not a health care facility.”

Joseph Backholm of the Family Policy Institute of Washington tells OneNewsNow that, in his opinion, this regulation might not actually apply to any of the people it was intended to target.

Backholm explains that the ordinance specifically targets limited service pregnancy centers, but by definition exempts any medical facility under state law. So the reality is that any pro-life pregnancy resource center where a licensed medical professional is operating within the scope of his/her license is in fact a medical facility.

Since most, if not all, of King County’s pro-life pregnancy centers do have medical personnel on staff, Backholm suggests that the county might have drawn a legal circle so tight that perhaps no pregnancy clinic at all will be included in its parameters. He contends that the ordinance passed not only for political reasons, but also as a tool for future harassment of pro-life centers by the abortion industry.

“I think there’s a 100-percent chance that [abortion proponents] are going to file complaints,” says Backholm. “They’re going to try and harass them, and drain their resources ….”

The pro-life centers of King County would definitely find it costly to defend and prove their medical facility status in court, draining finances that could be used instead to rescue babies from abortion.