OPINION: Marchers cheer Idaho’s abortion law, but practical details are few

On Jan. 25, several hundred marchers supporting Idaho’s abortion law system cheered on speakers who made two important points and seemed to be eliding a third.

The missing element seemed to be new legislation. That didn’t seem to be the focus of the event, which is quite a difference from many pro-life events in the past. That seems to reflect the legislative reality: Abortion doesn’t at the moment look to be on the front burner for this session.

Instead, the mood looked celebratory. Megan Wold, a lobbyist for Idaho anti-abortion legislation, told the crowd “Today, we can confidently say that there is no state in the United States with more pro-life or protective pro-life laws than Idaho.

She added, “Our work, of course, is not done this session.” But that doesn’t sound like a call for a crusade.

What she also said, according to The Idaho Statesman, sounded — lifted out of context, to be sure — almost like something pro-choice advocates would say on the subject: “Wold said doctors ‘can and must’ treat women in medical emergencies and ‘in the face of medical uncertainties.’ ”

The subtle difference is what the two sides would say center around the word “can.”

The most notable reference to new legislation in Wold’s talk concerned legislation to “educate medical professionals and the public.”

Advocates for the Idaho abortion law seem to perceive perfect clarity and no difficulty for physicians in complying with it. Attorney General Raul Labrador, for example, said that, “Idaho law protects both the life of the mother and their unborn child. Any perceived conflict has been perpetuated by politicians, organizations, and individuals seeking to confuse doctors and jeopardize patient health for political ends.”

The catch is that the laws are being written by people who are pursuing a philosophical argument, wherein the black and white of it feels evident.

The world looks very different and far messier from the point of view of a physician (or a patient) dealing with a specific personal medical issue that may not and often doesn’t fit neatly inside the philosophical construct.

St. Luke’s Health System, which has filed a lawsuit concerning Idaho’s abortion law, said, “the conflict between Idaho’s Defense of Life Act and EMTALA (federal Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act) makes it impossible to provide the highest standard of care in some of the most heartbreaking situations.”

The physician wants to know: What’s the rule when I encounter this (meaning, any number of many variations, maybe as many as there are patients) on the basic circumstance of pregnancy? Will I have to tell a patient — or withhold from a patient — what my training says they need to know? At what point exactly do various prohibitions in the law kick in?

The medical situation is different prospectively for every pregnant woman, and getting a law to clearly cover all the details of every case would seem impossible.

That would suggest, in this legislative session where few changes in Idaho abortion law are expected, two levels of education.

First, from physicians to the anti-abortion advocates about the detailed information they need to make professional sense of the law, so as to ensure they aren’t thrown into jail and lose their medical licenses. The only way they can be sure those things won’t happen, as matters stand, is to simply refuse many kinds of treatment to the pregnant or to possibly pregnant patients.

Second, the advocates of the law might provide some answers. To do that, they’d have to learn about pregnancy the way a physician specialist would. That would take an enormous amount of effort and research; an actual OB-GYN probably could provide an outline of how much that would involve.

For now, the likelihood is that the education will be limited. And Idaho’s pregnant patients will be getting progressively less and less treatment.

That’s the kind of result you get when laws are passed with limited amounts of research built in.

Stapilus is a former Idaho newspaper reporter and editor who blogs at ridenbaugh.com. He may be contacted at stapilus@ridenbaugh.com.