We are at a crisis point for reproductive healthcare and rights in Idaho. SB 1309 is part of the aggressive anti-abortion agenda pushed by politicians across the country to ban abortion outright, to interfere in a person’s individual freedom to control their own body. This bill treats women as if they are children and a husband or family member or even the parents of a rapist now controls their choices with threats and bounty systems mandating someone carry a pregnancy to term against their will.
In the past 2 years, the subject of mandates has overwhelmed this state, with fights in our chambers opposing mandates to wear a simple piece of cloth on your face to help prevent the spread of a deadly virus, yet many can cop-opt the language of this movement “our body our choice” and now MANDATE that a person must act as a mere vessel to carry a pregnancy to term against their will.
The bill falsely uses the language of “fetal heartbeat” and the intent of the legislation states that the government has taken a position that “life begins at fertilization.” If this body believes that a grouping of cells at 6 weeks constitutes a child then where are the parent’s rights to govern and control the fetus at that point?
I did a quick search of parental rights laws in Idaho, and I quickly found 17 laws that protect the rights of parents to control their kids’ lives and their choices, from immunization to education to marriage to their life or death, denying medical treatment of a child based on sincerely held religious beliefs to allow them to die.
Where are the rights of this pregnant person now? A woman is now treated like a child under the care and control of their husband or family members or abusers parents and denied the medical treatment she wants and deserves and has a right to…It’s as if a woman is not capable of making her own moral decisions, her own decisions about her own destiny.
There are many carve outs in our laws about “sincerely held religious beliefs.” Where is the carve out here? What if someone has a sincerely held belief that they should or can get an abortion. Who determines that? The heavy hand of the government again. I have heard citizens in this building saying that God told them not to get vaccinated. Why is their belief held more sincerely held than someone maybe of the Jewish faith who may not believe that life begins at conception but begins at first breath. Someone who says that god has visited them and told them to get an abortion?
The bill, modeled off Texas’s abortion ban, will to allow vigilantes to sue doctors and health centers who provide abortion care after about six weeks, well before many people know they’re pregnant or seek abortion care. This vigilante approach is an attempt to make an end-run around our constitutional right to abortion, which remains the law of the land. This bill would eliminate most abortion care in the state of Idaho, which appears to be a very explicit goal of the bill.
Our health care, our rights, and our freedom are on the line like never before. People in Idaho should be able to access health care without government interference into our personal, private decisions – my constituents should not have to endure the cruelty this bill will impose.
No one’s most personal medical decisions should be controlled by politicians, family members, abusers parents, or anyone else. While there are hundreds of reasons why an outright abortion ban would be bad for Idaho, but why don’t I start with twenty for this body to consider:
1. First off, this type of blatant and extreme attack on access to health care is deeply unpopular among Idaho voters. 2019 polling found that 65% of Idaho voters believe it is important that women in Idaho have access to all reproductive health care options, including abortion, and a recent poll done by the Washington Post showed that 65% of Americans believe the Texas law should be struck down by the Supreme Court and 58% said they oppose restrictions that make it more difficult for abortion clinics to operate. Passing this bill would not only cause immense harm to people in Idaho, but it would also be undemocratic, shirking the will of the majority in favor of an extreme and vocal minority.
2. With its “sue thy family” provision, SB 1309 is a full-scale assault on patients, their health care, and their support systems, not to mention families. This bill allows the patient and their partner’s family members to sue abortion providers – with a promise of financial reward – even if they are not involved in the patient’s care or the patient’s life. It deputizes people to spy on their family members and turn on one another, all for a $20,000 bounty or more. This bill will give family members unprecedented authority to enforce an abortion ban, allowing any relative – including an abusive partner, an ex-boyfriend, or even an estranged relative – to act as a bounty hunter and to haul doctors and other medical providers to court in hopes of collecting a minimum of $20,000.
3. This bill does not include meaningful exemptions to protect survivors of sexual violence. If a survivor of rape or incest seek abortion care, this bill prohibits their attacker from pursuing a civil action, but it still allows the attacker’s family to sue – meaning that an abuser’s sibling or parent could still pursue a lawsuit against their victim’s health care provider. SB 1309 would allow abusive partners and their family members to sue an abortion provider up to 4 years after the abortion. This is not justice for survivors.
I once helped a woman who overheard her abusive husband and mother-in-law planning her kidnapping and rape because she didn’t want to have children.
One of my constituents recently shared her story of being raped by her father when she was almost 12 and had started having her period. She recounts feeling “lucky” that she didn’t get pregnant, and she didn’t tell anyone because her father told her not to tell, and her mom was in the hospital. She shared how ashamed she felt and confused because she just assumed she had done something wrong.
What would someone like her have to do if she had been impregnated…if she had started to show, which would have been well after 10 weeks…who is going to take her to the police and make a report? What is going to happen to this child?
Authorities estimate incest occurs in over 10 percent of American families, yet only 20 percent of these offenses are reported. The crime often goes unreported because it is initiated by someone the child, usually a girl, loves and trusts. When a child does report a case of incest, friction usually develops within the family. The child may decide to say nothing, thinking that she is saving the family or assuming that this is normal behavior. (DOJ Incest the Last Taboo)
As we sit in the sterile environment of this chamber presenting ideology and philosophy and arguments of threading the law of how things ought to be, it’s easy to forget the real people and the real lives that are being impacted by these types of line in the sand laws. Life is more complex and human beings deserve love and empathy when they are facing crisis, not red tape, shame, confusion, and government interference.
These are the kind of people and situations we are talking about. The real people and the real lives being impacted by religious ideology and rhetoric.
4. This law would be a tool that gives abusers an additional way to control and intimidate their victims. When somebody in an abusive relationship seeks a wanted abortion, they should not have to worry that their care will result in threats or lawsuits. The state should be protecting survivors – not giving their abuser tools to harass their health care provider and drag their victims into court.
5. Enacting an outright abortion ban would undoubtedly increase intimate partner violence and reproductive coercion. An outright abortion ban will force people to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, which makes SB 1309 particularly concerning because pregnant people, especially those with unintended pregnancy, are more vulnerable to intimate partner violence than those who aren’t pregnant. In fact, experts have estimated that because of the Texas ban, as many as 46% of pregnant people in Texas could be forced to remain pregnant against their will. Restricting access to abortion puts pregnant people at even greater risk of experiencing intimate partner violence because being denied a wanted abortion forces people to stay in a relationship with an abuse partner. Moreover, growing evidence shows the pandemic has made intimate partner violence more common—and often more severe, which means people in Idaho are at even greater risk of experiencing violence.
6. While this bill may include an exception for rape and incest survivors, the requirements to prove what violence occurred is far too cumbersome and invasive for most survivors to undergo in just several weeks. Law enforcement typically does not even release reports in active investigations; in fact Idaho Code 74-105 exempts records police reports in an active investigation. Even if the patient has filed a police report – something many survivors don’t do so because they fear stigma and harassment – it may be impossible to obtain a timely police report for the purposes of proving that an abuser is ineligible to file a civil action, allowing that individual to harass their victim’s health care provider and cause further pain and trauma.
The average time of investigation for a sexual assault from report to arrest in a police investigation was found to be about 87.5 days or about 3 months; this according to The Sexual Violence Report on the Idaho State Police website. So, if you reported the rape, and you now have discovered your pregnant from a violent attack from a person that makes your skin crawl to think about, now you have to try to get a police report to take to your doctor, which is not an easy process. You will be wrestling with that red tape and reliving that terrible experience with each and every call.
7. This bill also doesn’t include any privacy protections, so a survivor of intimate partner violence could be called as a witness in a lawsuit and subjected to abuse and harassment. SB 1309 opens such an incredible cascade of risks for people who receive abortion care, in addition to their providers.
8. Passing this dangerous legislation will put health and lives in jeopardy, leading to worse health outcomes for pregnant people, children, and families across the state. States with more abortion restrictions tend to have poorer health outcomes for women and children than other states, including higher rates of maternal and infant mortality. Experts predict that a total abortion ban would lead to a 21 percent increase in the number of pregnancy-related deaths and a 33 percent increase among Black women.
9. If this bill passes, people who are unable to leave the state would be forced to carry pregnancies against their will and those with resources would be forced to flee the state to obtain essential care. Patients will be forced to travel to Washington, Oregon, Colorado, or even further. Experts estimate that if Idaho implements a 6 week abortion ban, Idaho patients could have to drive an average of 250 miles one way to access abortion care – an increase of more than 1,000 percent. Patients would need to put together resources to travel out of state, find childcare, and take time off work — on top of finding an out-of-state provider, a place to stay, and the funds to pay for care. These barriers will be insurmountable for far too many patients.
10. The impact of not getting wanted abortion care can be devastating. A pregnant person who is denied a wanted abortion and is forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term experiences four times greater odds of living below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), and they are also more likely to suffer anxiety and loss of self-esteem after being denied wanted abortion care. Moreover, major medical associations like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the American Medical Association have come out against the Texas law because of the clear harm it has caused Texas patients.
11. And because people in Idaho access a broad range of reproductive health care services at health centers that provide abortion care, attacks on abortion make it harder for providers to keep their doors open and limit patients’ ability to get other basic health care like STI testing and treatment, cancer screenings, and family planning services.
12. Let’s be clear who is harmed the most by bans on abortion care: people with means will always be able to access the care they need because they can afford to travel out of state. It is people with low incomes or without savings – who are more likely to be Black, Latina, and Indigenous due to generations of racist public policies – who will suffer the most. It is also people who face substantial barriers to health care, including LGBTQ communities, people in rural areas, people with disabilities, immigrants, and young people, who will be unable to get the care they need. These dangerous bans compound the challenges marginalized communities already face in accessing care, including having to find childcare, transportation, time off from work or school, and other resources. These communities stand to lose the most if SB 1309 goes into effect.
13. SB 1309 would have a chilling effect on doctors and health centers providing abortion care because of the threat of lawsuits, meaning nearly all providers will likely stop providing abortion care in the state; which this bill’s backers have been clear is their intent. In Texas, we have seen that the near-total abortion ban has been much broader than it should have been for fear of lawsuits, which was the precise intent of its creators. It has effectively stopped most Texans from being able to find health care services to which they still have a legal right unless they travel out of state.
The number of abortions performed in Texas dropped by 60% in the first month after S.B. 8 went into effect and has plummeted even further since then, forcing many people in Texas to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.
Additionally, health centers in states nearby Idaho would be immensely overburdened with patients desperately seeking care – new data shows that states nearby Texas saw a nearly 800% increase in abortion patients after the ban went into effect. This reality is heartbreaking and a glimpse of what’s to come should the Supreme Court restrict the constitutional right to an abortion even further.
14. This bill is also clearly designed to intimidate and harass abortion providers, limiting their ability to provide all kinds of health care services. Putting enforcement in the hands of private citizens will embolden anti-abortion extremists and increase the threat of violence to abortion providers and patients. After the Texas law went into effect, physicians and reproductive health clinics were subject to even more aggressive and threatening protests and surveillance—with protesters shining spotlights into clinic windows late into the night.
15. Not only is this bill immensely harmful and opposed by the medical community, it is also blatantly unscientific. This bill puts forward profound misconceptions about embryonic and fetal development. This bill relies on the unscientific concept of a so-called “ fetal heartbeat” – but what the bill defines as a “heartbeat” is not considered by medical experts to be coming from a developed heart, which forms later in pregnancy. Despite what we hear in an ultrasound, it is blatantly unscientific to rely on such terminology and demonstrates – yet again – why lawmakers have no business drafting legislation that limit the medical decisions of a patient.
16. On top of the abortion ban itself, the only way to verify the so-called fetal heartbeat is by mandating an unnecessary transvaginal ultrasound requirement, making health care providers give and patients receive diagnostic tests that are not based on the provider’s professional judgment. Forcing patients to undergo medically unnecessary tests is a demeaning intrusion on the private relationship between patients and their providers – these requirements undermine trust in the patient-provider relationship, serve no medical purpose, and take personal medical decisions out of the hands of providers and patients.
17. I haven’t even yet mentioned that this outright and outrageous abortion ban is blatantly unconstitutional – it flies in the face of nearly 50 years of Supreme Court precedent and with an enforcement mechanism specifically designed to evade judicial review. This bill attempts to circumvent the rule of law by avoiding legal review, a dangerous and alarming tactic that is dangerous not just for abortion access, but also for the rule of law itself. Laws like this could be used to undermine any number of other types of protected constitutional rights, from gun rights to marriage equality.
18. SB 1309 is also a waste of state time and resources. Litigation over the Texas law has only just begun, and it has already sparked a lawsuit from the Department of Justice, additional lawsuits in state court, and responses from federal legislators. If Idaho adopts a similar abortion ban, we can expect yet another expensive, time-consuming lawsuit, paid for by Idaho taxpayers who overwhelming oppose these types of measures. Our state has already spent over a million on losing in the courts over abortion restrictions, yet here we are again poised to spend even more on defending flagrantly unconstitutional laws.
19. There’s already a web of abortion restrictions in place in Idaho that make it incredibly difficult people in Idaho to access abortion care, including waiting periods, restrictions on insurance coverage, the discriminatory Hyde Amendment, and few abortion providers in the state. To secure funding, get an appointment, and arrange for time off work, childcare, and travel within a few short weeks is in insurmountable barrier for far too many people. For people already facing systemic barriers to care, this ban will likely put abortion out of reach entirely.
20. Banning abortion does not stop people from needing it. I want to remind everyone here that nearly one in four women in America will have an abortion by the age of 45. Whether you know it or not, every lawmaker in this room likely knows and loves someone who has accessed abortion care. Every person should be able to make their own decisions about their health and their bodies – including abortion. This is a matter of dignity, autonomy, and freedom.
Instead of banning abortion, politicians should be working to solve public health crises like the ongoing surge in COVID-19 cases, economic turmoil caused by the pandemic, and rising maternal mortality rates. Banning abortion only makes a bad public health situation worse and puts pregnant people’s lives in jeopardy.
S.B. 8 has been catastrophic in Texas, and this legislation will be equally catastrophic for patients in Idaho. Instead of these attacks, lawmakers should be doing everything in our power to make sure that we all have the rights, freedoms, and opportunities to control our lives at the most basic level: our bodies, our families, and our life’s path, including the right and ability to access safe and legal abortion. I urge you to oppose SB 1309.
** Special Thanks to Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest for helping with my floor debate and providing valuable information to support me during that very important argument.