Parkways Survives

Spokane’s ciclovía lives on. Plus, a truce is called over Camp Hope; and a social media spat at Spokane City Hall

Last year, we reported on the death of SpokeFest, and how the collapse of Spokane’s annual bike ride spelled doom for its sister event, Summer Parkways. One idea we floated in a cover story about making Spokane better for people on bikes (“Biketown,” Sept. 29, 2022) was to have the city run a yearly “ciclovía” event — where some streets are temporarily closed to cars but open to people on foot, bike, skateboard, etc. — like ciclovías are in dozens of other cities around the world. This would help avoid the biggest cost and headaches of Summer Parkways, which come with securing the proper permits. Well, it’s kind of happening. Last week, the Spokane Parks Foundation said it would run Summer Parkways following the formal dissolution of SpokeFest. The foundation isn’t technically part of the city, but it serves as the nonprofit, fundraising arm for the region’s parks departments. “The Summer Parkways event is a great fit for our mission, and we are excited to take the reins from SpokeFest to ensure that Summer Parkways will continue into the future,” said Kevin Hennessey, the foundation’s board president, in a statement. The event, as usual, will be held on the summer solstice, June 21. (NICHOLAS DESHAIS)

Camp Collab

For months, city and county officials in Spokane repeatedly clashed with the state over the East Central homeless encampment known as Camp Hope, which has sat on land occupied by the Washington state Department of Transportation since December 2021. But last week, the conflict surrounding Camp Hope showed signs of winding down, as state and local officials reached agreements to drop their respective lawsuits. The first truce came Tuesday, when Spokane County agreed to drop the abatement lawsuit they filed against WSDOT in an effort to clear the camp. A few days later, the city reached an agreement to settle a lawsuit filed by a group of camp residents and a nonprofit that had been suing in federal court to stop a looming sweep. In a statement, Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward said the city “will continue our ongoing attempts to work with the property owner on a plan to remedy the situation before seeking court action.” Woodward said the city’s plans to work with the state to finish housing camp residents and to “restore the neighborhood that has been impacted.” The camp is also shrinking fast: from more than 600 people over the summer to a recent estimated count of just 138. (NATE SANFORD)

Tweetstorm

Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward wasn’t happy about the Spokane Young Democrats’ social media posts attacking her plans to fight homelessness, says City Council member Zack Zappone. So she took action. Zappone’s legislative aide was Jeff Gunn, who led the Democratic group. But when Zappone and Gunn met with Woodward in December, he says, she issued an ultimatum. “She said, ‘I don’t know if we can continue to meet if these posts continue, especially next year,’” Zappone says. But Woodward says the problem with the social media post wasn’t that it was critical, but that it was based on a falsehood. “It criticized me for running on a ‘platform of solving homelessness in six months,’ yet I ‘am now responsible for the biggest homeless encampment in the state of Washington,’” Woodward recalls. “It was a lie.” Woodward never promised to solve homelessness in six months. But as Gunn pointed out, if Woodward was following his social media that closely, she would have noticed that the post was made before he became chair. The post was removed, but Zappone was bothered. “I told her, “I’m an elected official who represents a third of the city, and you’re going to stop working with me because of a post on social media?’” (DANIEL

WALTERS) n

Some pregnancy complications may cause severe or debilitating health risks that require medical intervention (including terminating a pregnancy), and hospitals that accept federal Medicare are required to provide “necessary stabilizing treatment” in their emergency rooms.

“Federal law is clear: Patients have the right to stabilizing hospital emergency room care no matter where they live,” said Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, when announcing the lawsuit in August. “Women should not have to be near death to get care.”

Meanwhile, Idaho state Sen. Scott Herndon, a Sagle Republican, has introduced a bill to change the definition of criminal abortion to address physician concerns about being able to treat things like ectopic pregnancies — when an egg is fertilized outside of the uterus — and miscarriages.

The new definition would state that abortion means to “intentionally kill a living embryo or fetus” and “shall not include the unintentional death of any human embryo or fetus or conduct that occurs after the natural death” of the fetus or embryo in the uterus.

However, the new definition not only introduces words associated with murder — changing language about terminating a pregnancy to “intentionally kill” — it also doesn’t allow for a wide range of instances when a doctor may need to end a pregnancy, says Dr. Amelia Huntsberger, an obstetrician who has practiced in the Sandpoint area for about a decade.

For example, while the language “in utero” was intended to allow treatment of ectopic pregnancies, it doesn’t take into account that an embryo can implant in a cesarean section scar, which is partially attached to the uterus, Huntsberger says.

“This highlights the problem of people who are not medical experts making laws about medicine,” Huntsberger says. “Instead of just providing the care that we’ve trained for years to know how to do, we’re thinking about our personal liability. Am I going to spend time in jail for this? Am I going to be a felon for trying to save this woman’s life?”

Huntsberger says pregnancy decisions should be left to patients and their doctors, and remain private. The new laws restricting abortion have led her to question whether she and her family should move out of Idaho, which she says is sad because they consider the Inland Northwest their home.

“In Idaho we have forced birth,” Huntsberger says. “There’s a certain irony that we value freedom and liberty, and yet people with a uterus don’t have the ability to have autonomy over their own bodies.”

Washington Says Whoa There

In Washington, meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers are pushing to further enshrine protections for abortion.

Since Idaho’s Supreme Court also upheld the state’s law that allows relatives of an aborted fetus to seek $20,000 in civil fines from the provider, some in Washington are working to limit participation in out-of-state prosecutions or court cases. It’s not clear yet if states like Idaho will go after Washington providers for care provided to Idaho residents, but the threat concerns health care workers and lawmakers.

Washington Senate Bill 5489 would prohibit another state from receiving information related to abortion or gender-affirming care if sought via subpoena (think everything from cellphone records to depositions), and would restrict warrants and extradition requests based on receiving or providing that protected health care.

The Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs took issue with the bill, with lobbyist James McMahan asking lawmakers not to put officers in the middle of the abortion debate.

He noted that anyone arrested on an extradition warrant would go to court first, and wouldn’t be transported to another state without agreeing to do so, or being ordered to.

“Law enforcement officers in all states honor judicial warrants from other states,” McMahan told lawmakers in January when asking them to oppose the bill.

Even if that shield law passes, some Washington reproductive health care providers are now worried about even traveling to other states.

Dr. Anuj Khattar, a family medicine physician who works with Cedar River Clinics (which has locations in Renton, Tacoma and Yakima), has held medical licenses in multiple Southern states, where he used to provide reproductive health care and abortion before it was banned. Now, he wonders, could he be arrested if he visits friends there?

“I’m asking them to come visit me instead, or meet somewhere else where abortion isn’t necessarily something that is criminalized and my life isn’t going to be put on the line for it,” Khattar says.

Aside from feeling restricted as to where he can travel, Khattar also worries about what could happen if he treats a patient in Washington from another state. Could he lose his license in a state that’s banned abortion due to providing legal care here?

“It’s hard to know how extensive those laws stretch if those patients come to me, because I hold medical licenses for those states,” says Khattar, who didn’t want to name the states for fear of retribution. “There’s no legal precedent for a lot of what’s occurring.”

Cedar River is already seeing patients travel to Washington from those more “hostile states,” says Cedar River’s spokesperson, Mercedes Sanchez.

“My suspicion is that when the Texas law went into effect, all the surrounding states were getting a huge influx of patients first, and then it would kind of ripple out to other states, and those wait times grew,” Sanchez says.

Patients traveling to Washington for care is nothing new. Spokane Valley and Pullman have had the closest Planned Parenthood clinics for those in North Idaho for years, and Kennewick has the closest location to Boise and Southern Idaho. But with clinics receiving even more out-of-state patients — 53 percent of abortion patients seen in 2022 at the Pullman Planned Parenthood clinic came from Idaho — the wait times for in-state patients could be growing as well.

In general, Washington has been very supportive of abortion rights, Sanchez says, but more protective steps are needed, including passage of several bills before the Legislature right now.

“I think there is just a concern that we don’t know what this is going to look like when the charges or cases start happening, so it’s really just trying to protect everyone,” Sanchez says.

Among the other measures Washington lawmakers are considering is a joint resolution that would ask voters to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution. While abortion was approved by a vote of the people in 1970, it is not explicitly protected in the Washington Constitution. However, the resolution may not have enough support from Republicans to get the two-thirds majority needed to send the amendment to voters.

House Bill 1340, another protective bill sponsored by Rep. Marcus Riccelli, a Democrat representing Spokane, would prevent health care providers in Washington from losing their medical license if they’re disciplined in another state for providing abortion or gender-affirming care.

Ashley Wilson, a nurse practitioner at the Pullman Planned Parenthood clinic who lives in Idaho, spoke in favor of the bill, noting she’s thankful it would ensure providers can’t be disciplined for providing legal care to patients, regardless of where they’re from.

“Currently, providers working in reproductive health are trying to juggle all our normal demands and now also the very real concern that the simple act of doing our jobs might in fact prevent us from being able to continue doing them,” Wilson told lawmakers last month. n