Four women sued Idaho over abortion law. An Ada County judge just ruled
An Ada County judge on Friday ruled partially in favor of four women who sued the state after they were denied health condition-related abortions in Idaho because of strict bans on the procedure.
The ruling puts in place the first clear carve-out of a health exception in the ban, a contentious issue that has sparked multiple lawsuits, including one that rose to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Fourth District Judge Jason Scott's split ruling came more than four months after closing arguments in Adkins v. Idaho. The weeklong trial included emotional testimony from plaintiffs Jennifer Adkins, Jillaine St. Michel, Kayla Smith and Rebecca Vincen-Brown, all of whom had to leave Idaho to terminate wanted pregnancies after learning their babies had fatal fetal anomalies that also could turn into life-threatening conditions for the mothers.
The case, filed in 2023 by the abortion rights nonprofit Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of the four women and several Idaho doctors, asked the court to clarify that the state's laws allow doctors to perform abortions when continuing a pregnancy makes an existing condition or pregnancy complication unsafe.
Scott sided with the abortion rights group on that point, but dismissed all of the other claims in the lawsuit 'with prejudice' — meaning the organization cannot bring them back to court. The lawsuit also asked the judge to declare Idaho's abortion ban a violation of pregnant people's equal rights and of Idaho physicians' due process rights, among other claims.
Idaho has had one of the country's strictest abortion bans since 2022, since the U.S. Supreme Court's overturn of Roe v. Wade allowed the Republican-dominated Legislature to pass stringent laws. The state's narrow exceptions for the procedure include when 'necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.'
Although Republican Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador has said that language allows doctors to perform abortions to protect a patient's health, physicians have said the language is vague — and they worry particularly because they face prison time and loss of their medical license if convicted of providing an illegal abortion.
Labrador's office did not respond to a request for comment on Scott's ruling.
Gail Deady, senior staff attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a news conference Friday afternoon that the decision was a groundbreaking one for Idaho abortion rights. But she lamented that his ruling missed a key aspect of the case.
'The court's ruling today provides much-needed clarity allowing pregnant people to get abortions when facing certain dangerous pregnancy complications that pose some risk of an early death,' Deady said. 'But that same ruling also left behind countless others who still cannot get abortion care, even when their fetus has no chance of survival, forcing them to either continue their pregnancies or flee to another state for care.'
Adkins also spoke during the news conference and urged additional action.
'This mixed ruling from the court does not go nearly far enough in protecting the women and families of our state from Idaho's cruel and insidious laws,' Adkins said. 'Someone should not have to be forced to drive the length of this vast rural state to find basic health care in another state while in the midst of a medical crisis. We are better than that.'
Idaho's abortion laws still face another major lawsuit over health exceptions. St. Luke's Health System, the state's largest hospital group, sued Labrador in January over claims that Idaho's abortion ban does not comply with the federal Emergency Medical Labor and Treatment Act, or EMTALA.
At the time, the hospital said it wanted to safeguard an injunction in place protecting emergency abortions as part of an identical U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against Idaho. That lawsuit was filed in 2022 by then-President Joe Biden's administration but was dropped last month by President Donald Trump's administration.
As a result, St. Luke's last month became the only Idaho hospital allowed to perform emergency abortions under a new injunction. Dr. Emily Corrigan, an Idaho OBGYN and plaintiff in the Adkins case, said during Friday's news conference that Scott's decision will allow all hospitals to perform abortions as emergency care.
'I hope that my physician colleagues across the state, along with their legal counsel, will feel confident that medically indicated abortion care is not a crime in Idaho,' Corrigan said.
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