A federal judge ruled last week that Idaho’s prohibition on abortion in cases where a physician deems it necessary to protect a mother’s mental health or to prevent self-harm is unconstitutional.
Judge B Lynn Winmill ruled on August 13 that the state’s “Defense of Life Act” and “Fetal Heartbeat Act” violate the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution. The 14th Amendment grants citizenship to all who are born on US soil and also guarantees due process and equal protection under the law.
Idaho has some of the strictest limitations on abortion in the United States. Abortion is not permitted except in cases of rape, incest or when the physical health of the mother is in danger. Doctors who perform illegal abortions face up to five years in prison.
Winmill found that prohibiting abortion for a woman who is threatening to harm herself is unconstitutional, and that there needs to be a “limit of the state’s power to make a woman suffer for the sake of an unborn child”.
“A pregnant woman’s health is not a state resource to be allocated at the legislature’s whim,” he said in the decision.
Winmill did not rule that the entirety of the laws were unenforceable, rather, only in cases where a mother seeks an abortion and threatens to harm herself.
Blaine Conzatti, president of Idaho Family Policy Center, called the ruling “another activist opinion attempting to invent a right to abortion somewhere in the Constitution where no such right exists”.
The Idaho Family Policy Center describes itself as Idaho’s “premier conservative Christian policy research and educational organisation”, and the group was involved in crafting Idaho’s pro-life legislation.
Conzatti continued: “Idaho law doesn’t allow women to get abortions for mental health reasons – and the Constitution protects no such right. We fully expect this to be reversed on appeal.”
“Every child deserves the protection of our laws, even in those cases where his or her mother is struggling with mental health,” he said.
Abortion, said Conzatti, “is never a valid form of psychiatric care”.
“Women struggling with mental health need treatment, not the enduring trauma that inevitably accompanies the unnecessary death of her preborn child,” he said.
