Summary

• Four women sued the state of Idaho after they were denied abortions due to fatal fetal abnormalities.

• The lawsuit aims to clarify medical exemptions to Idaho’s strict abortion laws.

• The plaintiffs will testify about their experiences in court Tuesday and Wednesday.

Four women who sued the state of Idaho after being denied abortions will testify Tuesday and Wednesday about their experiences traveling out of state to end unviable pregnancies.

The case, which is at the center of a hearing in Ada County District Court, aims to clarify medical exemptions in Idaho’s strict abortion laws. The plaintiffs are the Idaho Academy of Family Physicians, two doctors and four women who testified this week and learned while pregnant that their fetuses were unlikely to survive.

The lawsuit, filed last year, alleges that the woman suffered “unimaginable tragedies and health risks as a result of Idaho’s abortion bans” and that Idaho doctors lacked adequate guidance on when they could perform the procedure without risking prison time.

There are two in Idaho laws restricting abortion: Under the strictest rule, it is a felony to terminate a pregnancy at any stage, with limited exceptions, and providers who violate the law can face a prison sentence of two to five years. The second law allows citizens to sue health care providers who perform abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Neither policy makes an exception for the fatal fetal abnormalities that are the focus of the case.

“We’re not trying to tell Idaho how it should write its laws. “We’re just saying the laws as written don’t work,” said Nick Kabat, an attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights who represents the plaintiffs.

Idaho Governor Brad Little and Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador are defendants in the case. Labrador’s office declined to comment and Little’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

The Idaho case is Zurawski v. , which the Center for Reproductive Rights filed last year. It’s similar to the Texas case. In May, Texas Supreme Court rules against 20 plaintiffsWHO abortion denied although in the state dangerous pregnancy complications.

Kabat said he’s optimistic there will be a different outcome this time because “we couldn’t get to trial in Texas.”

Plaintiff Rebecca Vincen-Brown, who lives in Ada County, Idaho, said she was similarly hopeful.

Last year, during the 16th week of her pregnancy, Vincen-Brown learned that her fetus had several abnormalities; these included airway obstruction, bladder deficiency, and improperly developed heart and brain. DNA testing later revealed that the fetus had a rare chromosomal condition called triploidy. Her doctor told her that the pregnancy could not be sustained and that she would likely miscarry or have a stillbirth.

“We were never going to have a living baby at the end of the world,” Vincen-Brown said.

She and her husband decided to terminate her pregnancy at 17 weeks so as not to jeopardize her health or fertility. Since this wasn’t allowed in Idaho, they drove seven hours to Portland, Oregon. After the first day of the two-day surgery, Vincen-Brown walked past the fetus in the hotel bathroom around 4 a.m. while her 2-year-old daughter was in the other room.

“Deciding to have an abortion was probably the hardest decision of our lives, but the trauma that came with it when we went to Portland was completely unnecessary and 100% preventable,” she said.

The lawsuit alleges that Idaho’s law violates pregnant people’s rights to safety and equal protection, as well as doctors’ rights to practice medicine under the state constitution. It asks the court to declare that doctors in Idaho can provide abortion care in three specific scenarios:

• If a pregnant person has a medical complication that makes continuing the pregnancy unsafe or poses a risk of infection or bleeding.

• A pregnant person has an underlying medical condition that is made worse by pregnancy, cannot be treated effectively, or requires recurring, invasive intervention.

• It is unlikely that a fetus will survive pregnancy or birth.

The hearing comes right after an election in which abortion was a major issue And seven states have taken measures to protect itincluding two (Missouri and Arizona) that reversed existing bans. The case is one of many ongoing legal challenges to abortion bans. The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard arguments Monday about whether the state can enforce its 1849 abortion ban.

US Supreme Court in April I heard arguments Another lawsuit challenging Idaho’s total abortion ban claimed the state law violated federal policy mandating certain standards for emergency care. judges He dismissed the case in JuneI’m sending it back to a court of appeals.

Idaho’s two abortion bans were upended by the Supreme Court’s Roe v. It went into effect in August 2022, nearly two months after Wade overturned his lawsuit. The state’s six-week restriction makes exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of a pregnant woman or to prevent “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.” The full ban, meanwhile, makes exceptions for doctors who decide an abortion is necessary to save a pregnant woman’s life, and for cases of rape and incest. However, in these cases, the abortion must be completed in the first trimester and the pregnant person must report the situation to law enforcement.

Yet another Idaho law makes it a crime to help a pregnant minor travel out of state for an abortion, but that was temporarily blocked by a federal judge.

At this week’s hearing, Kabat said his legal team plans to argue that Idaho’s abortion bans will lead to deaths unless the exceptions are further clarified. But tracking such deaths is nearly impossible because the province has refused to renew its Maternal Mortality Review Committee, which investigates pregnancy-related deaths, and that committee’s term expires in July 2023.

“Someone may have died in Idaho, but there was no one there to actually evaluate that death,” Kabat said.