Matt Hrkac
Court Allows Idaho 'Abortion Trafficking' Ban to Be Enforced
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a challenge to Idaho's "Abortion Trafficking" law on Monday. The law makes it a crime to assist a minor in obtaining an abortion without their parents' knowledge, including driving them across the border to Washington state where abortion is legal.
In a split decision, the court upheld the provisions banning "harboring" and "transporting" of minors for the purposes of obtaining an abortion, rejecting a lower court ruling that the law was too vague to be enforceable. The Ninth Circuit also struck down language in the ban that prohibited "recruiting" minors to obtain an abortion, stating that aspect of the law violated free speech rights.
The law carries a penalty of two to five years in prison, and opens the convicted up to civil suits from the minor's family. Idaho does not have exceptions for rape or incest in their near-total abortion ban. Meaning if a child is impregnated by their father or guardian, this law mandates that the rapist be made aware of and consent to the abortion.
"Without the 'recruiting' prong, the statute criminalizes 'harboring' or 'transporting' a minor to procure an abortion with the intent to conceal the abortion from the parents or guardian of the minor — an intelligible crime that reaches the problems the legislature sought to rectify," U.S. Circuit Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote for the majority.
Questions remain on how the law will be enforced. Without stopping every car transporting female minors at the border and forcing them to take a pregnancy test, the law relies on second hand informants reporting that abortion assistance took place.
The vagueness around the language of the law also means people could theoretically be prosecuted for providing ANY assistance to a minor, including taking them to the post office where they received an abortion pill in the mail, or emailing or texting them resources from a women's health clinic.
A similar travel ban was passed in Tennessee but is currently blocked. Trafficking legislation has been proposed in Alabama, Mississippi, and Oklahoma.
