Washington
State prepares for more patients seeking abortion
SEATTLE (AP) — While the nation waits for the Supreme Court’s opinion on a blockbuster abortion case that could overturn Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood of Washington is getting ready for an increase in out-of-state patients seeking an abortion.
“We are already seeing patients from Texas, from Oklahoma. I saw a patient a couple of weeks ago from Alabama,” Dr. Erin Berry, gynecologist and Washington state medical director of Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands, told KING-TV.
Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest said it’s working to see which locations in Washington could open up for additional days if needed and upping its patient navigation teams, which help patients with appointments and travel arrangements.
“There’s a lot of unknown,” Berry said. “We also ultimately do not know how many people will be coming in from where and what their needs will be.”
Twenty-six states are likely to have total or near-total bans on abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Idaho’s trigger law bans all abortions with exceptions for rape, incest and if the mother’s life is at risk.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, 230,000 patients could travel across state lines from Idaho seeking an abortion.
Berry said it’s expensive for patients to travel across the country to access medical care and fears for funding in the long term.
The looming decision is creating uncertainty for more than just patients. The Washington Medical Commission, which regulates physician license in Washington, said if Roe v. Wade is overturned it could raise practice concerns for Washington licensees.
“If the Supreme Court rules the way it looked like it was, that’s going to cause a lot of confusion in a medical, legal landscape,” said Washington Medical Commission Deputy Executive and Legislative Director Micah Matthews. “The pandemic has greatly extended (the medical field’s) reach through telemedicine or getting licenses through compacts and surging into other states to help health systems in need.”
The Washington Medical Commission, along with the Board of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery, Nursing Care Quality Assurance Commission and Pharmacy Quality Assurance Commission, released a jointly-written FAQ to address concerns.
“We want to just be clear that when it comes to (the commission) considering an application, or a complaint that we received, what matters is Washington law,” said Matthews.
No matter the ruling, abortion in Washington will remain legal.
In 2022, access to abortion expanded in Washington state, Matthews pointed out. Effective June 9, 2022, the state’s legal language changed from a “woman” to “pregnant individual.”
Seattle City Council also passed a resolution last month to allocate funds from the 2022 supplemental budget to expand access to reproductive health care. An exact dollar amount has not been given yet but is expected to be discussed in committee in July.
When asked if there are any plans for more state funding to accommodate an influx of patients, a spokesperson for Gov. Jay Inslee’s office said, “We are speaking with legislators and providers about a range of additional policies and resources that would ensure we can provide abortion services to any person seeking them in Washington. The governor is fully committed to making sure we protect patients’ abortion rights and expand access.”
Access, Berry believes, is a fundamental right.
“It feels like a violation of a physician’s oath to deny this care to people,” Berry said. “And to know that that’s going to be happening on a widespread scale, it’s really intense and really sad.”
North Carolina
State Supreme Court reinstates conviction in co-worker’s death
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The North Carolina Supreme Court reinstated a man’s murder and robbery convictions in the death of his co-worker on Friday, reversing an appellate ruling that had declared the circumstantial evidence at trial was too weak for guilty verdicts.
A divided panel of the state Court of Appeals last August had vacated the 2019 convictions of David Myron Dover in the 2016 stabbing death of 79-year-old Arthur “Buddy” Davis in Kannapolis. Dover and Davis worked at the same automobile sales store. Their boss found Davis in his home, stabbed more than a dozen times. Dover was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In a 5-2 ruling, the state’s highest court said the trial judge had been right to deny Dover’s motion to dismiss the case after prosecutors presented their evidence.
According to court opinions, Dover had a substance abuse problem and had asked his girlfriend to look in a trash can near his house for about $3,000 in cash to help him post bail on a charge unrelated to Davis. Evidence from cellphone records also shows his phone was in the vicinity of Davis’ home, even as Dover told police initially he had been at home the night before Davis was found dead.
“Here substantial evidence supports the reasonable inference that defendant murdered the victim and took $3,000” from Davis, Chief Justice Paul Newby wrote in the majority opinion. The evidence also was sufficient to infer that Dover had gone to Davis’ home that night, Newby wrote, and case law establishes that when an accused person makes conflicting statements about a crime, it may be considered a circumstance of someone “possessed of a guilty conscience” seeking to divert suspicion.
“Taken together, these facts show that defendant had the motive, opportunity and means to commit both the robbery with a dangerous weapon and the first-degree murder,” Newby added.
In a dissenting opinion, Associate Justice Robin Hudson wrote that prevailing justices “misapplied our standard of review when testing the sufficiency of the evidence to support a conviction based on inference from circumstantial evidence.”
There’s no evidence that can lead someone to infer reasonably that the $3,000 was actually money that Davis was supposed to give to his daughter, according to Hudson. She pointed out that the prosecution’s own expert said that the cellphone data didn’t prove that Dover was at Davis’ home, and none of forensic evidence connected Dover to the crime.
The evidence “at most raises only a suspicion or conjecture that defendant was the perpetrator of the robbery and murder,” Hudson wrote in her opinion, joined by Associate Justice Anita Earls.
Dover, 59, has been serving his sentence at an Alexander County prison.
