It’s been thirteen months since Roe v. Wade was overturned and Idaho (along with other conservative states) jumped on the opportunity to criminalize abortions. The legal minefield that’s been laid out since is still developing, and can be confusing.
Planned Parenthood is seeking to clear some of that up. The group announced this week that they’re running a local ad campaign to clarify that traveling out-of-state is still legal for both Idaho adults and minors, directing patients to clinics in nearby Oregon and Washington for abortion care.
In a statement announcing the campaign, the CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawai’i, Alaska, Indiana, and Kentucky wrote that: “Extremist politicians in Idaho don’t want you to know that you can access legal abortion care just across our state border.”
Her statement is at least in part in response to Attorney General Raúl Labrador, who wrote in a May legal opinion that Idaho physicians, as part of one of Idaho’s three abortion bans upheld in January, can’t refer patients to abortion providers in other states. Planned Parenthood is suing Labrador’s office over the opinion.
While adults can cross into Oregon or Washington for care, it is illegal for physicians to perform abortions in Idaho. It’s also illegal to transport a minor to another state for an abortion — although that law, an “abortion trafficking” ban, is facing a challenge in court from groups who say it’s vague and unconstitutional.
Anti-abortion politicians also have yet to find a concrete way to restrict abortion medication, which is still legal to order from Idaho. Even before the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in June 2022, abortion pills accounted for over half of all abortions in the U.S.
