In the list of Republican states where the challenge to federal abortion rights has created dramatic situations since 2022, Idaho occupies a prominent place. Its policy in this area has led the US Supreme Court to take another look at access to abortion on Wednesday, April 24.
Even before the Court's decision to end constitutional protection of abortion in June 2022, conservatives in this northwestern state had pushed through a 2020 law banning all abortions except in cases where the mother's death is an absolute certainty. An "incredibly extreme" text, believed Representative Ilana Rubel, leader of the Democratic minority in the State Assembly. "Even for abortion ban states, this is a very extreme ban. It's not a six weeks ban, not a 12 weeks ban, it's a total ban from the moment of conception. It has absolutely no health exception. There is no fetal non-viability provision. If you are carrying a foetus that has no skull, no brain, no nervous system, no possibility of survival, you're nevertheless required under Idaho to carry to 9 months," she expounded on April 17 during an appearance at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank in Washington.
According to the Democrat, her Republican colleagues had not anticipated that the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision would "really" be overturned in 2022 – although they had been working on it for years – and that abortion legislation would therefore be the states' responsibility. Had that not happened, a draconian text would then come into force, largely due to the one-upmanship traditionally indulged in by conservative candidates in the run-up to primaries.
Two years after the Supreme Court decision, elected officials are facing the consequences of their legislative intrusion into the medical field. Idaho has lost a quarter of its gynecologists and more than half of its high-risk maternity specialists. In some parts of the state, women have to travel 250 kilometers to see a gynecologist, not for an abortion but for a routine visit.
Doctors risk five years in prison and suspension of their license to practice if they perform an abortion. Many prefer to leave, like Lauren Miller, a specialist in maternal-fetal medicine, who has left Boise and submitted a memorandum to the Supreme Court with three other gynecologists. "They don't want to be in a position to have to choose between committing overt medical malpractice and sitting there inactive while a woman loses her uterus, and prison time," explained Rubel.
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