Idaho’s Abortion Ban Back in Effect to Protect Unborn Babies
Idaho’s abortion ban is again in force across the state after a federal judge narrowed an earlier order that had blocked enforcement of the abortion ban in cases where the mother’s health is supposedly in jeopardy.
U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill limited the injunction this week to the Boise abortionist who brought the lawsuit, Stacy Seyb.
The abortion ban still protects mothers and babies across the state and no one else can kill babies in abortions.
Under the narrowed order, Attorney General Raúl Labrador and the Ada County prosecutor may not enforce the felony ban against Seyb when kills a baby in an abortion supposedly because of a serious risk of harm from physical or mental health concerns. Never mind that studies for decades have shown that abortion itself causes physical or mental health concerns for women.
Winmill wrote that “an injunction limited to Dr. Seyb will suffice to address the alleged harm.”
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Winmill had ruled earlier that the entire abortion ban was blocked, which Labrador argued that decision was too broad. The judge agreed to narrow it after Labrador pointed to recent U.S. Supreme Court cases holding that federal judges generally may not issue “universal injunctions” reaching beyond the plaintiffs in a case.
Labrador asked the judge to lift the block entirely. Winmill refused. He remained “persuaded” that abortions to protect women against serious health risks or against death from self-harm were constitutionally protected and apparently ignored evidence of how aboritons have killed and injured women and are linked to mental health issues.
Labrador appealed the underlying decision to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on August 20, arguing the injunction defies Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and returned abortion policy to the states.
Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys, working with Labrador, told the 9th Circuit that the district court had become the first federal court after Dobbs to “find” a new federal constitutional right to abortion. In an emergency motion asking the appeals court to stay the order, they wrote that the district court “has become the first to re-constitutionalize abortion. Its injunctions defy Dobbs, create expansive rights based on a doctor’s subjective assessment of risk, and contradict the vast history of state prohibitions on ‘therapeutic’ abortions.”
ADF Senior Counsel John Bursch said, “States have the strongest possible interest in protecting the most fundamental of our human rights—the right to life. Nothing in the federal Constitution grants a right to take innocent, unborn life.”
He said the state was urging the appeals court “to respect Idahoans’ desire to protect life, which Attorney General Labrador has fought so courageously to defend.”
Labrador said, “Idaho’s Defense of Life Act protects both mothers and their unborn children. The U.S. Supreme Court was clear in Dobbs that there is no constitutional right to abortion and that states have full authority to protect unborn life. That authority rests with the people of Idaho through their elected representatives. We will defend that law as far as needed.”
The attorneys said that since Idaho’s pro-life laws took effect, the state’s maternal mortality rate has plummeted.
They also complained that Winmill’s original order let abortion doctors decide, in their personal judgment, which maternal health risks were enough to end a baby’s life, and that the court even suggested the risk of a C-section could justify an abortion. They said the ruling also allowed essentially any professed mental-health concern to justify abortion, “despite abortion not treating the cause of any mental health problem.”
Pro-life advocates called the narrowed injunction a victory because the statewide ban is again in effect except as to Seyb.
The case is not finished. Labrador is still asking the 9th Circuit to wipe out what remains of the block.
Voters will also decide the issue in November. An initiative called the Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act would create a so-called right to kill babies in abortions up to birth.
