King County councilmembers, except one, vote to affirm abortion rights

KING COUNTY, Wash. — All King County councilmembers, except Reagan Dunn, voted in favor of passing legislation to support abortion rights.

It comes after a leaked draft of a U.S. Supreme Court decision suggested that Roe v. Wade could be overturned.

RELATED: Legal expert weighs in on leaked Roe v. Wade draft opinion

Roe v. Wade is the name of the lawsuit that led to the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion in the United States.

A story from the King County Council on the county’s website states that even if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the landmark decision of 1973, it would be the “law of the land” in the county.

Councilmembers Claudia Balducci and Jeanne Kohl-Welles brought the motion forward.

“If the Supreme Court moves forward with this outrageous decision, they will take away the rights of women to make decisions about their own bodies,” Balducci said in a release on the county’s website. “As a nation, we must stand up to this kind of restriction on freedom and autonomy, in the same way we condemn assaults on freedom in any other country in the world. We must also renew our commitment to making abortion care widely accessible in King County and Washington state, including to anyone who needs to flee their own home in order to exercise their reproductive rights safely, legally and with dignity.”

Reagan Dunn is the son of Jennifer Dunn, who served six terms as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Washington’s 8th congressional district.

According to a 2012 report from the Seattle Times, Reagan Dunn was named after Ronald Reagan back in 1971.

Reagan Dunn’s parents were reportedly smitten by Ronald Reagan’s positive brand of conservatism when he was one-term governor of California.

It is reported that Jennifer Dunn seemingly modeled herself after the governor in her rise to Congress.

Reagan Dunn reportedly said he had learned politics from his mom.

It was also reported that Dunn’s mother wanted him to go into business, but he could not shake politics.

The Seattle Times reported in that 2012 article that, “In the late 1990s he saw Texas Gov. George W. Bush speak and told his mother: ‘You’ve got to get behind this guy,’ and she did.”

During Bush’s run for president in 2000, Reagan Dunn became co-counsel for Bush’s presidential campaign in Washington state and eventually was hired by the Department of Justice, becoming coordinator of Project Safe Neighborhoods once Bush had been elected president.

Although Reagan Dunn worked for Bush, he supported same-sex marriage and abortion rights, according to the Seattle Times.

In 2003, Dunn returned to Washington state and became a federal prosecutor for The United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington. In 2005 he ran against Steve Hammond to become a councilmember for the newly configured 9th District of King County, and won.

According to a Seattle Times report in 2005, Dunn did not believe in the government paying for abortions as he did not think “the government should be involved in the decision.”

Moving to 2021, Dunn is still in office as he was chosen to represent the 9th District for the fifth time, beating Democrat challenger Kim-Khanh Van.

According to the Covington Reporter, the 9th district is described as “a cross-section of urban, suburban and rural voters, spanning from Enumclaw in the southwest all the way to the southern tip of Bellevue. While council seats are non-partisan, Dunn is a Republican, Van is a Democrat.”

The newspaper reported that Dunn’s victory was probably due to his constant push for police funding and opposition to safe drug injection sites, as his district was more conservative than other King County districts.

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