BOISE, Idaho – Four women suing over Idaho's strict abortion bans told a judge Tuesday how excitement about their pregnancies turned to sadness and fear after they learned their fetuses were unlikely to survive birth – and the way they’d to go away the state to get abortions out of fear that pregnancy complications would endanger their very own health.
“We felt like we were being made refugees, medical refugees,” said Jennifer Adkins, considered one of the plaintiffs within the case.
The women, represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, usually are not calling for a repeal of the state's abortion ban. Instead, they need the judge to make clear and expand exceptions to the strict ban so that individuals with serious pregnancy complications can get abortions before they’re about to die.
Currently, the state's near-total ban makes it a felony to perform an abortion at any stage of pregnancy unless it’s “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.”
Adkins' fetus had a serious medical condition that meant it might not survive the pregnancy. The disease also puts Adkins vulnerable to developing “mirror syndrome,” a dangerous syndrome that could cause fatal hypertension and other problems, she said.
Adkins and her husband decided to have an abortion and learned they’d have to go away the state for an abortion after an ultrasound showed the fetus still had a heartbeat.
“No parent wants to wish they couldn't see their baby's heartbeat when looking at an ultrasound, but I was hoping I wouldn't,” Adkins said. “I wanted the decision to be made for us and I wanted to end her suffering, so it was really hard to realize that and know that we had the challenges that we had.”
Jilliane St. Michel and Rebecca Vincen-Brown told similar stories, telling the judge how they were devastated to learn that their fetuses suffered from serious medical conditions incompatible with life and the way the indisputable fact that they were forced to go away the state for an abortion, making the already tragic experience much more complicated.
Kayla Smith cried as she told the judge how she came upon she was pregnant for the second time on Mother's Day 2022 and the way she and her husband selected the name “Brooks” for his or her son. She was about 18 or 20 weeks pregnant when the sonographer went silent during a routine anatomy exam, Smith said.
Brooks' heart had abnormalities that were probably the most serious her doctor had ever seen – and the young family couldn't discover a pediatric cardiologist anywhere willing to perform surgery to correct the defects. Even if the center might have been repaired, the veins that offer Brooks' lungs were also abnormal, Smith said. It was possible she could carry the fetus to term, but it surely wouldn’t survive the birth, she said.
Smith had previous experience with pregnancy complications. Her daughter was born via emergency cesarean section, 33 weeks after Smith developed preeclampsia, a dangerous hypertension condition that put her at high risk of stroke. Doctors warned her that there was a risk of developing pre-eclampsia again.
“If I were to continue the pregnancy, not only would I be risking my life with preeclampsia, I would also be unwilling to watch my son suffer and possibly gasp for air,” Smith said, crying.
Idaho's abortion ban went into effect two days before Brooks' diagnosis, she said, making it unattainable for her to get an abortion in her home state.
“We wanted to get to know our son — that was really important to us — so we had to do it in a hospital,” she said. They took out a loan to cover the estimated $16,000 to $20,000 in out-of-network costs and drove greater than eight hours to a hospital where doctors induced labor.
They had an autopsy that confirmed the center defect was even worse than what they saw on the anatomy scan, she said. They also decided to have Brooks cremated, which meant they’d to drive back two weeks later to gather his stays.
The cost, the shortcoming to work with the doctors she selected, the compliance with rules surrounding the transport of human stays — all would have been avoided if she had been capable of receive abortion care in Idaho, Smith said.
“All four of these women were overjoyed to be pregnant with their second child, and all four received the worst news a mother could imagine,” attorney Gail Deady of the Center for Reproductive Rights told 4th District Judge Jason D. Scott, during opening arguments. They all sought abortion “to protect their health, to spare their babies pain and suffering, and to stay alive and healthy to protect their young children.”
The exceptions to Idaho's abortion bans are unworkable and endanger people like Smith, St. Michel and a whole bunch of other Idaho residents who face similar conditions, Deady said.
“Unborn children have a fundamental right to life, and protecting the lives of children is a legitimate and fundamental government interest,” Craig said.
The state also has the identical interest in protecting women's lives, Craig said – and the abortion ban laws do each, he claimed.
In the “rare cases where an abortion is necessary” to forestall the death of the mother, Idaho law allows it, Craig said. The women suing were attempting to “usurp the role of the Legislature” by asking the judge to rewrite the law, he said, and that was not the court's proper role.
The women were the primary witnesses to testify within the trial, which is anticipated to last all month.
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