Women suing Idaho after being denied abortions will tell their stories in court

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Idaho’s abortion laws, from left: Kayla Smith, Jillaine St. Michel, Rebecca Vincen-Brown, Dr. Julie Lyons, Dr. Emily Corrigan and Jennifer Adkins.

The summary

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

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

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

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

The lawsuit at the center of the upcoming trial in Ada County District Court aims to clarify the medical exceptions to Idaho’s strict abortion laws. The plaintiffs are the Idaho Academy of Family Physicians, two doctors and the four women who testified this week and who learned during their pregnancies that their fetuses were unlikely to survive.

The lawsuit, filed last year, alleges that the woman has suffered “unimaginable tragedies and health risks as a result of Idaho’s abortion ban,” and that doctors in Idaho lack sufficient guidance on when they can perform the procedure without risking jail time.

Idaho has two laws restricting abortion: Under the strictest rules, it is a crime to terminate a pregnancy at any stage, with limited exceptions, and providers who break the law face a prison sentence of two to five years. A second law allows private citizens to sue health care providers who perform abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Neither policy makes an exception for fatal fetal abnormalities, which are the focus of the lawsuit.

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

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

The Idaho case is similar to Zurawski v. Texas, a lawsuit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights last year. In May the The Texas Supreme Court ruled against the twenty plaintiffsWHO abortions were denied in the state despite dangerous pregnancy complications.

Kabat said he is optimistic about a different outcome this time because “we couldn’t go to trial in Texas.”

Rebecca Vincen-Brown, a prosecutor from Ada County, Idaho, said she is also hopeful.

Vincen-Brown discovered last year, when she was 16 weeks pregnant, that her fetus had several abnormalities, including a compromised airway, a missing bladder and a heart and brain that were not properly developed. DNA testing later showed that the fetus had a rare chromosomal condition called triploidy. Her doctor told her that the pregnancy was not viable and that she would likely miscarry or have a stillbirth.

“In no world would we end up having a live baby,” Vincen-Brown said.

She and her husband decided to terminate the pregnancy after 17 weeks to avoid endangering her health or fertility. Because that wasn’t allowed in Idaho, they drove seven hours to Portland, Oregon. After the first day of the two-day procedure, Vincen-Brown passed the fetus in the hotel bathroom around 4 a.m., with her 2-year-old daughter in the other room.

“The decision 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.

A protest against abortion rights at the Idaho Statehouse in downtown Boise on May 14, 2022.

The lawsuit alleges that Idaho’s laws violate 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:

• A pregnant person has a medical complication that makes it unsafe to continue the pregnancy or there is a risk of infection or bleeding.

• A pregnant person has an underlying medical condition that is exacerbated by the pregnancy, cannot be treated effectively, or requires recurring, invasive interventions.

• A fetus is unlikely to survive pregnancy or birth.

The process follows an election in which abortion was a central issue And seven states have taken action to protect itincluding two (Missouri and Arizona) that reversed existing bans. The case is one of several ongoing legal challenges against abortion bans. The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard arguments Monday over whether the state can enforce an 1849 abortion ban.

In April, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled arguments heard in another case challenging Idaho’s total abortion ban, that lawsuit alleged that the state law conflicted with federal policy mandating certain standards for emergency care. The judges dismissed the case in Juneand sends it back to an appeals court.

Idaho’s two abortion bans took effect in August 2022, about two months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. 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, abortions in these cases should be completed in the first trimester and the pregnant person should report the incident to the police.

Yet another Idaho law makes it a crime to help a pregnant minor leave the state for an abortion, but that law has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge.

During the trial this week, Kabat said his legal team plans to argue that Idaho’s abortion ban will lead to deaths if the exceptions are not further clarified. However, such deaths are virtually impossible to track because the state refused to renew its Maternal Mortality Review Commission, which investigated pregnancy-related deaths, so it expired in July 2023.

“It could be that someone died in Idaho, but there was no one to really evaluate that death,” Kabat said.