SEATTLE – In response to the news that NARAL Pro-Choice America PAC has endorsed U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) for president, NARAL Pro-Choice Washington announces that their state affiliate is remaining neutral.  NARAL Pro-Choice America and NARAL Pro-Choice Washington are separately incorporated entities, and no monies given to the state affiliate go to the national organization.

“In the Senate and in their public lives, both Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama have been leaders for a woman’s right to choose,” said Karen Cooper, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Washington.  “Sen. Clinton has worked with our own Sen. Patty Murray to help make birth control more accessible for the women who need it.  She, like Sen. Obama, is a co-sponsor of the Federal Freedom of Choice Act, which would put the findings of Roe v. Wade into federal law.  Time and again, both Sens. Clinton and Obama have stood up for the right to privacy and the right to choose.”

“American women would be well-served by either Clinton or Obama in the Oval Office,” Cooper added.

On the Republican side, U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the presumptive presidential nominee, has said he wants to see Roe v. Wade overturned, he supports the continuation of George W. Bush’s failed abstinence-only policy and the elimination of funding for low-income women’s access to birth control, and he recently declared his intention to stack the U.S. Supreme Court with more right-wing judges.

“I look forward to finally moving beyond the institutionalized anti-woman policies of the Bush Administration when we elect a pro-choice president,” Cooper said.  “John McCain would be no better than Bush has been for women’s reproductive rights.”

NARAL Pro-Choice Washington is the leading grassroots pro-choice advocacy organization in Washington State. NARAL Pro-Choice Washington works to protect every woman’s right to access the full range of reproductive health options, including preventing unintended pregnancy, bearing healthy children, and choosing legal abortion. NARAL Pro-Choice Washington is the state affiliate of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

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