OPINION: If you’re in Idaho, it’s dangerous to be pregnant

Three years into living under an extreme anti-abortion rights law, Idahoans are showing increased alarm about the risks of being pregnant in the Gem State, what might be coming next and how these draconian measures will impede economic growth.

As the Idaho Capital Sun’s Kelcie Moseley-Morris reported last week, a poll commission by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research found the following:

-- 27% of Idaho adults agree with the state’s abortion policies. Tied with Kentucky, that’s the lowest number in the union.

-- 50% of Idaho adults disagree with the ban, topping all but Missouri at 51% and Florida at 52%.

-- 57% of Idaho adults are concerned about abortion access, a finding exceeded only by Arizona, Kentucky and Louisiana, each at 58%, and Florida at 61%.

-- 52% of Idaho adults are concerned about access to OB-GYNs.

-- 53% of Idaho adults are concerned about access to prenatal care.

Faced with the stark choice of two-to-five years in prison, losing their medical licenses and civil suits for at least $20,000 if they practice medicine in high-risk pregnancies, doctors are fleeing the Gem State. A year ago, the Idaho Physician Well-Being Action Collaborative reported the state lost 22% of its practicing obstetricians and 55% of its high-risk obstetricians, leaving fewer than five specialists in that field practicing throughout the state. Recruiting replacements has been difficult.

Bonner General Health in Sandpoint, Valor Health in Emmett and West Valley Medical Center in Caldwell have closed labor and delivery departments.

Not only is that causing maternity care deserts throughout Idaho, but the departure of OB-GYNS is spreading caseloads onto general practicioners, which has the effect of limiting care for other patients.

-- 48% of Idaho adults are concerned about access to fertility treatment.

-- 51% are concerned about access to contraception.

Idahoans have good reason to be nervous about both. Influential lobbies are pushing lawmakers toward a fetal personhood law. Should that happen, treatments such as in vitro fertilization would be at risk. So would access to some forms of contracaption, such as Plan B.

Sizeable numbers of adults living in reproductive rights states are reluctant to relocate to jobs where abortion is outlawed. Examples include Washington (42%), Oregon (41%), California (42%) and Colorado (40%).

The same goes for adults who are worried about relocating to states suffering a shortage of prenatal care. Examples include Washington (41%), Oregon (43%), California (42%), Colorado (39%) and Montana (40%).

In other words, they believe it’s dangerous to be pregnant in Idaho.

You don’t have to travel too far in Idaho to hear anecdotal evidence from employers about encountering difficulties recruiting people of child-bearing years to relocate to the Gem State or seniors whose children have moved away and are reluctant to return to a state governed by Idaho’s laws.

Three years after Idaho’s GOP politicians became the dog that caught the car by enabling policies that were only abstractions before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, reproductive rights have become a nonpartisan issue for voters.

Idaho is one of six states with a total ban on abortions — and the only one within the Intermountain West.

And despite the pleas of the medical community, lawmakers not only have refused to add an exception that would allow doctors to treat women suffering crisis pregnancies, but the state’s attorney general is fighting to eliminate the last remnant of this care in hospital emergency rooms.

All of which bodes well for the initiative campaign to overturn Idaho’s interference with the health care decisions of women, their families and their physicians.

Sponsored by Idahoans United for Women & Families, the Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act would protect access to:

Abortion until the point of fetal viability or later in the case of a medical emergency.

-- Contraception.

-- Fertility treatments.

-- Miscarriage care.

As the campaign to collect signatures qualifying the measure for the ballot begins in May, ask yourself: How much longer do you want to trust Idaho’s out-of-touch ruling class with this most personal of health care choices? — M.T.