The lawsuit challenges the state’s strict abortion laws, seeking clarity about when doctors can provide abortions without facing jail time.
The lawsuit alleges that Idaho’s laws violate pregnant people’s rights to safety and equal protection, as well as physicians’ rights to practice medicine under the state constitution. It asks the court to declare that physicians in Idaho can provide abortion care in three specific scenarios:
- A pregnant person has a medical complication that makes it unsafe to continue a pregnancy 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 recurrent, invasive intervention.
- A fetus is unlikely to survive the pregnancy or birth.
The trial comes on the heels of an election in which abortion was a key issue and seven states passed measures to protect it, including two (Missouri and Arizona) that reversed existing restrictions. 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 an 1849 abortion ban.
In April, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in another case challenging Idaho’s total abortion ban — that lawsuit alleged that the state law violated federal policy mandating certain standards for emergency care. The justices dismissed the case in June, sending it back to an appeals court.
Idaho’s two abortion bans took effect in August 2022, roughly two months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The state’s six-week restriction makes exceptions for rape, incest and to save a pregnant woman’s life or prevent “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.” The full ban, meanwhile, makes exceptions for physicians who decide an abortion is necessary to save a pregnant woman’s life, and for cases of rape and incest. However, abortions in those cases must be completed in the first trimester and the pregnant person must report the incident 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 one has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge.
Kabat said that his legal team intends to argue in the trial this week that Idaho’s abortion bans will lead to deaths if the exceptions aren’t clarified further. Such deaths are nearly impossible to track, however, because the state declined to renew its Maternal Mortality Review Committee, which investigated pregnancy-related deaths, so it expired in July 2023.
Источник: www.nbcnews.com
