RELEASE: Office of the Attorney General Defends Idaho’s Life-Affirming Laws in Adkins v. State of Idaho

[BOISE] – The highly-publicized trial over Idaho’s abortion law, Adkins v. State of Idaho, concluded yesterday in Idaho District Court.  Jim Craig, Division Chief for Civil Litigation and Constitutional Defense at the Attorney General’s Office, and Kyle Grigsby, Deputy Attorney General, presented the State’s defense before District Court Judge Jason D. Scott.

“Idaho’s law was written specifically to protect both the life of the mother and her unborn child, with exceptions that account for a doctor’s good-faith professional judgement,” said Attorney General Raúl Labrador. “I’m grateful for the hard work of our attorneys defending Idaho’s Defense of Life Act.  Under cross-examination, the plaintiffs’ own expert witness, Dr. Katharine Wenstrom, conceded that OBGYNs should consider not only pregnant women but also their unborn children as patients. Dr. Wenstrom continued that it was a physician’s obligation to provide competent medical care with compassion and respect for human dignity and rights, including the right to be free from care that causes harm to their patients, both the mother and her unborn child.”

The State’s argument in Adkins centers on three key points:

1. In the extremely rare circumstances when abortion is necessary to prevent the death of the mother, Idaho law allows doctors to exercise their good faith medical judgment to make that decision and save the mother’s life. The threat of death does not have to be imminent or certain.
2. For 150 years, long before Roe v. Wade, Idaho’s laws have historically limited abortion to situations where the life of the mother is at stake. After the Dobbs decision, the Idaho Supreme Court determined there is no fundamental right to abortion within the Idaho Constitution.
3. The Idaho legislature has written the laws to protect all of Idaho’s children when there is some chance of survival, as the Idaho Supreme Court recognized, not only those children deemed satisfactorily healthy enough to live by abortion advocates. Many children diagnosed with serious fetal conditions go on to lead full and happy lives. Plaintiffs’ testimony under cross-examination argued that such fetal conditions should be a justification for an elective abortion despite Idaho’s commitment to protect all life, not just healthy lives without challenges.