The Seattle Storm have become the first professional sports team to partner with and issue public support for Planned Parenthood.
The two-times WNBA champions on Thursday announced their inaugural Stand With Planned Parenthood night for 18 July, when the club host the Chicago Sky at Seattle’s KeyArena. The choice is perhaps no accident: it’s the team’s lone nationally televised home game of the season.
The night will include a pre-game rally outside the arena, a silent auction and a pledge from the team to donate five dollars to Planned Parenthood for every ticket purchased.
“As individual Americans who are not legislators, merely citizens, we have felt hamstrung by our limited ability to make a meaningful impact in the national health care debate,” Storm co-owner Dawn Trudeau said in a statement. “Access to affordable, quality health care, including a full range of reproductive care, is a critical precondition for anyone – especially girls and women, to pursue their dreams and grow into their best selves.”
The announcement comes two months after US president Donald Trump has signed legislation that permits states to deny federal family planning money to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers, erasing a rule that had been finalized shortly before Barack Obama left office in January.
Trudeau is one of the team’s three co-owners along with Lisa Brummel and Ginny Gilder, who together became the first all-female ownership group to win a professional sports title when the Storm swept the Atlanta Dream for the WNBA championship in 2010.
