Significant Victory in Idaho’s Ongoing Fight to Protect Life

Dear Friends,

Last week, we won a significant victory in Idaho’s ongoing fight to protect Life. Idaho’s Abortion Trafficking law can now be enforced, which prohibits anyone from taking a minor child out-of-state for an abortion or giving them drugs for a chemical abortion without parental consent. This law was the first of its kind in the nation. 

To no one’s surprise, this law was quickly challenged and subsequently enjoined by a federal magistrate in district court in the case Matsumoto v. Labrador. My office appealed this up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in May to allow Idaho’s law to be enforced. A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit released their opinion last Monday, lifting the lower court’s injunction on most aspects of Idaho’s law. The Ninth Circuit held the statute’s prohibition on procuring an abortion by harboring and transporting minors with the intent to conceal the abortion from the minor’s parents are likely to be found constitutional and can be enforced while the litigation proceeds.

Unfortunately, the court also ruled that the specific language that discusses “recruiting” a minor for an abortion is overly broad. This was a split decision amongst the judges and the dissenting judge opined that he would have preferred to let the entire law go into full effect.

For now, we can add this law back into Idaho’s expanding pro-life protections for mothers and their unborn babies. It seems odd that Idaho would even need to write a law that prohibited taking a minor out-of-state for a medical procedure without permission from that child’s parents, as if parental consent or knowledge was an unnecessary or inconvenient afterthought.

But looking at the pro-abortion forces that lined up to oppose something so commonsense, it becomes apparent what we are fighting against. Those criticizing this positive outcome for Idaho tried to claim – and a complicit media happily repeated – that Idaho’s law left minors who suffered a pregnancy from incest without any recourse. Nothing could be further from the truth. Idaho’s Abortion Trafficking law in this case addresses a non-parent taking a minor out-of-state for an abortion.

A different statute, Idaho’s Defense of Life Act, specifically provides clear abortion exceptions for rape and incest without the need to take anyone out of the state. These laws work in harmony to mutually protect both unborn lives and the victims of unspeakable crimes like rape and incest. Despite how opponents might try to portray Idaho’s laws, our goals of protecting life have been crafted with compassion, empathy and support, even in the worst of circumstances.

Our pro-life fight is far from over. While we can enjoy this hard-won victory, we know there is much more work to be done on behalf of the vulnerable. I will always fight to protect the lives of mothers and their unborn children here in Idaho and defend our state sovereignty and the rule of law.