OPINION: Doubling down on Idaho’s abortion mistakes

It’s a classic case of the dog catching the car. What seemed politically astute in the abstract has devolved into a disaster in the two years since the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, empowering Idaho’s lawmakers to enact a ban on abortions.

They can’t say they weren’t warned about how this would compromise women’s health and drive doctors out of the Gem State.

But they certainly know better now.

Women in crisis pregnancies are being transported to other states where doctors do not have to choose between helping their patients or going to prison for two to five years and losing their licenses.

More than one-fifth of the obstetricians who were practicing in Idaho two years ago have fled the state. More than half of the maternal fetal medicine specialists who worked in Idaho on the eve of the Supreme Court ruling have left as well.

Meanwhile, conservative Idahoans are turning against the law. Polling on behalf of Idahoans United for Women and Families show 59% support making abortion legal, either almost entirely or with some restrictions. When it comes to imposing criminal penalties on health care providers, 63% are opposed.

Nonetheless, the Idaho GOP’s political establishment is undeterred:

On June 13, Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, both R-Idaho, joined most of their Republican colleagues in voting against protecting a woman’s right to in vitro fertilization. It mirrors a June 5 vote in which Crapo and Risch voted against protecting a woman’s right to contraception. Both measures are rooted in the idea that beginning with conception, a fertilized egg enjoys the rights of personhood — thereby putting both IVF and access to contraception in jeopardy.

Republicans accuse Democrats of playing politics. But Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska didn’t take the bait. They voted for both measures.

Last week, the Idaho Republican Party approved a platform plank that unquestionably attacks IVF and also appears to endorse challenging access to hormonal contraceptives, emergency contraceptives and IUDs: “We affirm that human personhood begins at the moment of conception and ought to be protected and cherished from that moment on. We affirm that the intentional taking of human life through the act of abortion is murder. All children should be protected regardless of the circumstances of conception, including persons conceived in rape and incest. ...We oppose all actions which intentionally end an innocent human life, including abortion, the destruction of human embryos, euthanasia, and assisted suicide.”

Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador is leading the charge against the last shred of legal protection for emergency room physicians who are attempting to preserve the health — and probably lives — of women in crisis pregnancies. His challenge to the Reagan-era federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which provides cover for ER doctors to provide “necessary stabilizing treatment,” went before the U.S. Supreme Court. The attorney general has since gone on to gaslight the issue of patients being airlifted to states where getting care isn’t against the law. “This is just another example of Democrats not being honest with the people of Idaho about abortion issues,” Labrador’s spokesman, Dan Estes, said.

And at Labrador’s behest, key Idaho committee chairpersons — Reps. Brent Crane, R-Nampa, at House State Affairs and John Vander Woude, R-Nampa, at Health and Welfare — retreated from their assurances to national media outlets that they would pursue an exemption to the state abortion ban that would free doctors to respond to a woman’s health care emergency.

Said Crane: “Idaho has some work to do. ... Be patient with us.”

Said Vander Woude: “I might say I’m pro-life, but I’m also pro-life for the mother, too.”

Face it: If they’ve learned anything from the trauma Idaho women have suffered at their hands, these politicians aren’t showing it. In fact, they seem to be doubling down. So don’t look to them to correct their mistakes.

If voters want change, they will have take matters into their own hands. That means electing new lawmakers with new ideas.

Or they can wait until 2026 when Idahoans United for Women and Families will presumably place a pro-reproductive rights initiative on the ballot.

Of course, that means two more years of crisis pregnancies and more doctors moving on. — M.T.