Whaling opponent's mom is proud of her daughter

[Guest guest]

Friday, April 21, 2000, 12:03 a.m. Pacific

 

Whale-hunt protester injured in Coast Guard collision has no regrets

 

 

 

by Eli Sanders

Seattle Times staff reporter

 

Dorothy Abbott was listening to public radio in Memphis yesterday when she

heard that a woman roaring around Neah Bay on a Jet Ski had been rammed by

a Coast Guard boat protecting Makah whale hunters.

 

" I thought, `Oh, that must be Erin,' " Abbott, 55, said of her daughter.

" She is one passionate and committed person. "

 

And Erin Abbott it was.

 

The 24-year-old animal-rights activist had to be airlifted to Olympic

Medical Center in Port Angeles yesterday after she was injured by the Coast

Guard boat, which was trying to push her out of a federally mandated

500-yard exclusion zone around the whaling canoe.

 

Since 1998, when the Makahs decided to revive their tribe's tradition of

hunting gray whales, the Coast Guard has been charged with enforcing the

federal government's decision that such a hunt is legitimate.

 

That task has put the Coast Guard in the position of defending whaling

protesters and Makah whalers from each other, and from themselves.

 

" I just want to be a voice for the animals, " said Erin Abbott, 24, from her

hospital room yesterday, sedated by painkillers and under police guard.

 

" They ran over me. I wasn't expecting to get run over by a boat. I expected

to try and protect a whale that's trying to migrate to its summer resting

spot. "

 

Abbott reported suffering a broken shoulder and some fractured ribs, and

said she was being kept overnight in the hospital because of fears that her

lungs might collapse.

 

The Coast Guard arrested Abbott, who could be charged in federal court for

violating the exclusionary zone. She could face a fine and six years in

jail.

 

A native of Tampa, Fla., Abbott has lived in Seattle for about a year and

is a member of the animal-rights group Ocean Defense International.

 

" Nothing gives us the right to take their lives just because they can't

communicate in words like you and I do, " Abbott said. " Whales are

defenseless creatures. They bleed just like you and I do. "

 

 

Abbott's mother Dorothy, a former civil-rights activist and writer, said

she was proud of her daughter.

 

Erin Abbott graduated from the University of South Florida with a major in

childhood education. She protested at the World Trade Organization meetings

in Seattle.

 

And she believes it is unnatural for humans to kill animals.

 

" It's natural for, say, a cheetah to kill a gazelle. But humans can survive

just fine without any animal resources. We can go to a grocery store

whereas a cheetah can't, " Erin Abbott said.

 

Staring down death while fighting for the rights of others seems to run in

the Abbott family.

 

Dorothy Abbott recalls a frightening incident back in her days as an

employee of the juvenile-court system in Jackson, Miss.

 

It was 1964. She said she had a report about a child being abused. She went

to a house to investigate and was greeted with a gun. She retreated but

said she eventually got the child out of the abusive household.

 

And she's glad her daughter has proved just as daring.

 

 

 

 

2000 The Seattle Times Company