Four women challenge Idaho’s abortion ban in court

BOISE (Idaho Capital Sun) — At 16 weeks pregnant, Rebecca Vincen-Brown received devastating news. Her fetus had multiple structural defects, including a dangling choroid plexus in the brain, a heart rotated on its axis, a horseshoe kidney, no detectable bladder or diaphragm, a displaced stomach, and missing digits on the right hand.

Her options were limited. She could continue the pregnancy, risking serious health complications like preeclampsia or hemorrhaging, face a miscarriage that might jeopardize her fertility, or seek an abortion.

Vincen-Brown chose an abortion, but Idaho’s strict abortion bans left her with no choice but to travel out of state for care. After the first day of the procedure, her pregnancy ended in the bathroom of a Portland hotel, where she gave birth to the fetus while her toddler was in the room next door.

On Tuesday, Vincen-Brown testified before Ada County Judge Jason Scott, sharing her experience as one of four women suing the state of Idaho over its strict abortion bans that forced her to seek care out of state.

“If it was in Idaho … I would have been able to get into the car first thing when I first started contracting, drove down to the hospital, been with the doctors whom I trusted, been in an environment that I knew,” Vincen-Brown told the court. “It would have been covered by health care that I had, and I wouldn’t have been giving birth while my two-year-old daughter was on the other side of the wall.”

The hearing marked the start of arguments in Adkins v. State of Idaho, a lawsuit filed in September 2023 by the Center for Reproductive Rights. The case represents four Idaho women denied abortions despite facing serious pregnancy complications, two Idaho physicians, and the Idaho Academy of Family Physicians, a medical association.

This lawsuit aims to clarify and broaden the medical exceptions to Idaho’s abortion bans, ensuring that physicians can provide necessary abortion care to protect a pregnant person’s health and safety, including in cases of fatal fetal diagnoses. 

Center for Reproductive Rights, State of Idaho give opening statements

The first day included opening statements from both sides. 

Gail Deady, an attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the outcome of this case has broader implications, as they represent not only the plaintiffs but also the hundreds of Idahoans who have been forced to travel out of state for abortion care.

Jim Craig, a division chief at the Idaho Office of the Attorney General, began his opening statement saying unborn children have a fundamental right to life. 

“The evidence will show that every successful abortion results in the death of an unborn child,” Craig repeated throughout his opening statement. “Idaho has the right to protect those lives.” 

Craig said there is no right to abortion in Idaho, and it doesn’t matter how much plaintiffs try to articulate that. 

“They are relying on hypotheticals and speculation on what might happen to people,” he said. 

Four women share how Idaho’s abortion ban impacted their pregnancies

Jennifer Adkins, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, began her testimony by sharing the joy she felt upon discovering she was pregnant. But she explained that she later sought an abortion after learning her pregnancy was likely to end in a miscarriage, or put her own health at risk.

Like Adkins, Jillaine St.Michel told the court she was thrilled when she discovered she was pregnant, excited at the thought of giving her toddler a sibling. However, at her 20-week ultrasound, she was devastated to learn that her child had severe anomalies, with organs and tissues measuring weeks behind normal development.

“I knew that remaining pregnant was inherently more risky than not being pregnant, and so deciding to remain pregnant with a fetus or a baby that stood no chance of survival seemed like an unnecessary risk to take,” St.Michel said. 

St.Michel and her family traveled to a clinic in Seattle after contacting 20 clinics in surrounding states. She had to attend the appointments alone. Her husband stayed home to care for their child.

“It was the worst four days of my life, I can’t describe it any other way,” St.Michel said in court. “Each day was worse than the last.”

Kayla Smith, the fourth woman named in the lawsuit, discovered she was pregnant with a child on Mother’s Day of 2022. After a complicated first pregnancy, she told the court she excited to have a second baby. 

However, 18 weeks later, an ultrasound revealed that her fetus had severe heart defects. Continuing the pregnancy would not only put her own health at risk, but also involve watching her child struggle to breathe, as the heart defects would affect lung development.

“If I were to continue the pregnancy, not only would I be risking my life of developing preeclampsia, but I was not willing to watch my son suffer and essentially gasp for air,” Smith told the court.

Ultimately, no doctor would perform the surgical interventions needed to help her fetus survive. And even if a surgeon would take it on, her child would need a heart transplant before the age of four or five. 

“I think all could have been prevented,” Smith said, sobbing on the stand during the trial, referring to what might have been different if she had been able to get an abortion in Idaho.

First day of trial ends with testimony from Boise OB-GYN

Tuesday’s trial day ended with testimony from Dr. Emily Corrigan, an OB-GYN at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise, who is also a physician plaintiff. Corrigan discussed various kinds of pregnancy complications and situations where abortion used as a standard of care. 

Idaho’s abortion ban says physicians must use “good faith medical judgment based on the facts known to the physician at the time, that the abortion was necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.”

Corrigan said that Idaho’s abortion ban is unclear because it does not use medical terminology. She has since met with legislators, testified before them, and ultimately filed this lawsuit to address her concerns about the ban. 

The trial is scheduled to end on Nov. 21.