NPI urges Senate to advance constitutional amendment to protect reproductive freedom

Edi­tor’s Note: The fol­low­ing are the pre­pared remarks of NPI’s founder and exec­u­tive direc­tor in sup­port of Sen­ate Joint Res­o­lu­tion 8202, a pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment which declares that “the state shall not deny or inter­fere with an indi­vid­u­al’s repro­duc­tive free­dom deci­sions.” The res­o­lu­tion, which would need a two-thirds vote of the Leg­is­la­ture to pass, was giv­en a pub­lic hear­ing in the Sen­ate Com­mit­tee on Health & Long Term Care today.

Good morn­ing. For the record, my name is Andrew Vil­leneuve and I’m the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute. NPI is pleased to be here today in strong sup­port of this pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion­al amendment.

Gov­er­nor Inslee men­tioned as this hear­ing began that he firm­ly believes that our Con­sti­tu­tion should be amend­ed to enshrine repro­duc­tive auton­o­my in our state’s con­sti­tu­tion. NPI’s research shows that Wash­ing­to­ni­ans agree. Emphatically.

Last June, short­ly before the Dobbs deci­sion was offi­cial­ly pub­lished, we asked the fol­low­ing ques­tion of a large rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of statewide vot­ers:

QUESTION: Do you strong­ly sup­port, some­what sup­port, some­what oppose, or strong­ly oppose amend­ing the Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion to pro­tect Wash­ing­to­ni­ans’ free­dom to obtain repro­duc­tive health­care, includ­ing abor­tion care?

A total of 63% said they sup­port a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment, with 57% of the total say­ing they strong­ly sup­port­ed one. Just 28% were opposed — 21% strong­ly, 7% some­what. 8% were not sure. 1,039 like­ly vot­ers were inter­viewed as part of this sur­vey from June 1st-2nd, 2022.

This sur­vey was one of sev­er­al that NPI com­mis­sioned in 2022 that accu­rate­ly fore­shad­owed the sub­se­quent midterm results, includ­ing Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray’s com­fort­able vic­to­ry over chal­lenger Tiffany Smi­ley — an elec­tion that some believed would be very close, but which our polling con­sis­tent­ly showed wasn’t.

It is rare, espe­cial­ly on a con­tentious issue with strong­ly held views on mul­ti­ple sides, for more than fifty per­cent in a statewide sam­ple to say they strong­ly sup­port a pro­posed pol­i­cy direc­tion, espe­cial­ly some­thing as sig­nif­i­cant as a pro­posed change to our plan of government.

Yet that is what we see here. A major­i­ty of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans fierce­ly believe in repro­duc­tive free­dom — it’s real­ly, real­ly impor­tant to them.

This sup­port extends across all regions of the state.

East­ern and Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton favors a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment. The Olympic Penin­su­la and South­west Wash­ing­ton favor one. North Puget Sound favors one. The South Sound favors one. King Coun­ty favors one.

Strik­ing­ly, there’s even more sup­port and less oppo­si­tion for amend­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion to pro­tect repro­duc­tive rights than for keep­ing Roe v. Wade. 62% of vot­ers sur­veyed favored keep­ing Roe in this same sur­vey, while 31% were opposed. Net sup­port for this con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment is 4% higher.

That sug­gests there are a few folks not sup­port­ive of Roe who nev­er­the­less join the major­i­ty of their fel­low cit­i­zens in believ­ing that our state should exer­cise its author­i­ty to explic­it­ly rec­og­nize a right in our state con­sti­tu­tion that adds to the rights already explic­it­ly rec­og­nized in our fed­er­al and state constitutions.

The peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton should be giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vote on this impor­tant ques­tion. We urge you to move this pro­posed amend­ment for­ward for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion in the leg­isla­tive process.

Hap­py to field any ques­tions. Thank you.