Idaho to Appeal Court Decision Blocking Law on Out-of-State Minor Abortions

Idaho's recent legal challenge over the 2023 law
Idaho's recent legal challenge over the 2023 law. Credit | REUTERS

United States – The state of Idaho will ask the federal appeals court to make the year 2023 law active again on Tuesday.  This 2023 law became a crime for those who send a minor over state lines for an abortion without her parent’s permission. The judge blocked this law in November last year.

Court Challenges

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S.  Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle will listen to her case challenging the law brought by Lourdes Matsumoto, a lawyer who works as a victim advocate and who assists victims of sexual violence, and the Northwest Abortion Access Fund and Indigenous Idaho Alliance which helps people in Idaho have the abortion, as reported by Reuters.

United States Magistrate Judge Deborah Grasham in Boise, in a preliminary opinion, asserts that the law signed by Republican Governor Brad Little last year, which is nearly about a year, is against the plaintiffs’ rights to free speech and expression under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The judge mentioned that the provision is ambiguous about what constitutes the illegal trafficking of drugs and dangers to women’s health.

Plaintiffs want to sue the law because they have no plans of breaking it.  They asked the court to consider that the state does not have the right to protect the rights of parents when the parents of students do not want to violate the law.

Idaho has made it all but impossible to have an abortion, with only narrow exceptions to save the life of the woman, for the case of rape or incest that has been reported to the authorities. Nevertheless, they can visit Oregon, Washington, and Montana, which they can do.

Some territories, like the one in Idaho, look for the restriction of people on abortion outside of the country.

Controversial Measures

The law imposes upon eligible adults a minimum of two years behind bars if they help a minor obtain a statutory or medical abortion without parental authorization and the crime is successfully convicted.

The plaintiffs have stated that the law violates their constitutional rights by infringing on their First Amendment free speech rights and preventing Idaho citizens’ constitutional right to interstate travel.

This case is a controversial case among the several laws that criminalize the facilitation of border crossing to seek abortion where it is legal.

National Impact

The case is part of a number of cases in which people are prosecuted for this action as they act in states where abortion is not permitted. In 2022, the U.S.  Supreme Court overturned Roe v.  Wade that was a landmark decision from 1973 which had been establishing the universal right to abortion for all.

A group of Alabama health care providers, as well as a fund that helps those in Alabama, filed lawsuits in 2022 with the aim of not allowing anyone to be prosecuted under the national law because somebody helped them to travel outside the state for abortion. Alabama’s Republican attorney general had recommended that anyone of such would be charged as a criminal co-conspirator, as reported by Reuters.

In November of FY, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) submitted a statement in support of these lawsuits that the Constitution guarantees the right to travel for abortion.