Alaska governor Sarah Palin was thrust into the spotlight last year when she was chosen as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate. When reports surfaced that her teenage daughter, Bristol, was pregnant her views on abortion and women’s reproductive rights suddenly became a hot topic. Palin proudly touted her anti-choice stance and used her own personal experience of choosing to continue her pregnancy with her youngest son, even after learning he had Down’s Syndrome.

Palin is a member of the right to life group, Feminists for Life, which works to discourage abortion by helping provide women with practical resources and support, which they believe is the reason women seek abortions. However, in 2007, Palin cut funding for programs that helped these at-risk women, including WIC. But, despite her anti-choice stance, abortion laws in Alaska have actually become more lax since she took office and she has taken criticism from anti-choice groups for passing up the opportunity to allow the state legislature further debates on two controversial anti-abortion bills, one of which could have outlawed partial birth abortion in all cases except where the mother’s life is at risk.
In 2007, the Alaska Supreme Court found the state’s 1997 parental consent law unconstitutional and unenforceable because it infringed on their right to reproductive privacy. Palin thought the ruling was “outrageous”, and had the Attorney General issue a petition for retrial. His petition was denied.

Alaska’s state constitution actually provides more protection to women’s reproductive rights than the federal constitution. Under the state constitution’s right to privacy, the Alaska Supreme Court struck down a “quasi-public” hospital’s ban on performing abortions and lifted a statute that released persons or hospitals refusing to participate in abortions from liability. They found that limiting the cases (rape, incest, etc) in which medical assistance was allowed to be used for abortion services was also unconstitutional under the state constitution because it prohibited reimbursement for medically necessary abortions.

Despite being touted as having some of the most liberal abortion laws in the country, the NARAL Pro-Choice America website reports there are currently fewer abortion providers in Alaska than there were in 1973 when Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Court. Currently 81 % of Alaska’s counties have no abortion provider, meaning some women had to travel hundreds of miles for the procedure, which can lead to dangerous complications.

Like Alabama, women seeking abortion services in Alaska must also receive state provided information, that includes the name of agencies that will provide adoptions services, medical assistance for pre and post natal care as well as assist with getting child support. The information, which is required to be available to women on the internet, also shows the “probable” development of the fetus at two week intervals. In a win for the pro-choice movement, materials provided by a panel of doctors, many of whom were pro-choice, were made available on the website. This material included a disclaimer stating recent studies showed there is no discernable connection between abortion and breast cancer., which apparently an argument used to try to dissuade women from seeking abortion services.

NARAL Pro-Choice gives Alaska a B- on women’s reproductive rights. The progress they’ve been able to make is pretty surprising and impressive considering that their governor is so anti-choice. I wonder if she’ll try to impede this progress if she ever stops focusing on drilling for oil and natural gas pipelines?

Next month we’ll focus on Arizona and see how reproductive rights fare under anti-choice governor Jan Brewer.