BOISE, Idaho — Abortion providers said they’ll have to turn away many people seeking to terminate pregnancies after Idaho Gov. Brad Little on Wednesday signed a bill that will allow families to sue anyone who performs an abortion after roughly six weeks of pregnancy.
The law, which was modeled after a Texas law passed last year, allows certain family members to sue abortion providers for $20,000 in civil court in any instance where a fetal heartbeat can be detected. Physicians said that marker — more accurately described as “electrical activity” than a heartbeat — often occurs before many people know they’re pregnant.
Dr. Erin Berry, the Washington medical director for Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands, said the law will diminish abortion access in Idaho and send a surge of patients to Washington. Berry also provides abortions in Idaho.
“It’s a really horrible loss, and it’s going to drastically decrease the amount of abortions we can provide patients in the state of Idaho,” Berry said. “As a physician, I can’t tell you how awful this is. It feels like a violation of my oath.”
Four facilities provide abortion services in Idaho: three Planned Parenthood clinics and one private practice. All of the facilities are in southern Idaho.
Planned Parenthood doesn’t disclose how many abortions it performs, but the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortions, said in 2017 — the most recent year data was available — 1,290 abortions were performed in Idaho. That’s 0.1% of all abortions performed in the U.S. that year.
Rebecca Gibron; interim CEO for Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky; emphasized in a statement that Planned Parenthood will keep its doors open in Idaho. Abortions are a small fraction of the services the clinics perform, and they will still be able to perform abortions before six weeks of pregnancy without potential litigation. But Berry said the number of abortions in Idaho could now fall by more than half.
“We learned a lot from Texas,” Berry said. “There we saw the number of abortions decreased by about 60%.”
Abortion rates have dropped nationwide in the last decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In order to detect the electrical activity lawmakers have called a heartbeat, Berry said health care providers will need to perform transvaginal ultrasounds on many patients. Idaho did not previously require people seeking abortions to have an ultrasound. If Berry were to perform an abortion on a patient after a so-called fetal heartbeat is detected, she could face numerous lawsuits for a single procedure.
“The reason we are going to stop (providing some abortions) is because the financial consequences could be devastating to not only me but my staff,” Berry said. “In one day, you could be sued for six figures.”
Berry said political reasons, not medical, will force the clinic to turn away patients.
Despite signing the bill into law, Little joined critics in questioning the constitutionality of the legislation. Idaho Chief Deputy Attorney General Brian Kane said in a legal opinion issued ahead of Little’s decision that he believes the law violates the U.S. and Idaho constitutions.
Last week, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed legislation expanding which health care providers can perform abortions in his state. He said that would help address an anticipated increase in patients coming from Idaho to have abortions. At the same time, Washington abortion providers said they were bracing for that increase.
Berry, who is based in Seattle, said she already sees Idaho patients in Washington. She has even seen patients from Texas after the state passed its restrictive law last year.
Berry said Planned Parenthood is “preparing all we can” to meet demand for in-clinic abortions, as well as telehealth abortion appointments. Still, she anticipates an impact.
“It’s going to increase the number of people accessing care in Washington, which is potentially going to increase wait times for everyone,” Berry said.
Abortion access advocates with Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America said the Idaho law will likely have an outsized impact on people of color, low-income individuals and people who live in rural areas, all of whom may face barriers to traveling.
Berry said she also worries that Idahoans will continue to have abortions without medical supervision. In December, Dr. Kara Cadwallader; the chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky; told the Idaho Statesman she was already seeing an increase in “self-managed” abortions in Idaho. Cadwallader said many patients were using abortive medicine they’d ordered online and were at risk for infection and severe bleeding, possibly to the point of causing infertility.
People have been having abortions for centuries and will continue regardless of the law, Berry said. The difference is whether they’ll have abortions safely.
“I’m worried that people will be scared to get the care they need and they’ll die,” Berry said.
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