Decision finds Idaho abortion laws violate 14th Amendment
U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled Thursday that Idaho cannot prosecute physicians who perform abortions to protect a pregnant person’s health or to prevent self-harm, a federal court decision that narrows how the state enforces its near-total abortion ban.
In an 81-page ruling issued in Boise, Winmill found that Idaho’s “Defense of Life Act” and “Fetal Heartbeat Act” — which together create a near-total ban on abortion — violate the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment.
The case, Winmill wrote, is not about bodily autonomy or reproductive choice, but rather “the limit of the state’s power to make a woman suffer for the sake of an unborn child.”
The decision turns on the medical-emergency question. Both statutes already contain narrow exceptions, the ruling notes, including abortions performed to prevent the death of a pregnant woman, and in cases of rape or incest where the pregnant person has filed a police report. Winmill wrote that the state cannot pick and choose which life-threatening conditions justify abortion care.
“A pregnant woman’s health is not a state resource to be allocated at the legislature’s whim,” Winmill wrote.
The laws carry criminal penalties for physicians. Doctors convicted under either statute can lose their medical license and face up to five years in prison.