On 23 September, staff and faculty at the University of Idaho received a strange missive from their employer. In an email sent out by university lawyers, professors were told that in accordance with the state’s new abortion ban, they are now prohibited from a large swath of activities. They are no longer allowed to “promote abortion”. They are no longer allowed to “counsel in favor of abortion”. They are no longer allowed to tell students, or anyone else, where to get an abortion; they are no longer allowed to dispense emergency contraception, like Plan B. State law now forbids any state resources or state employees’ time from being spent “promoting” or “advertising” either abortion or “services for the prevention of conception”, so the university won’t be dispensing birth control any more, either.
The email said that the university can continue to provide condoms, so long as those condoms are distributed for the purposes of preventing disease transmission only, not for birth control. Since when used correctly condoms prevent both pregnancy and disease transmission, how this change will affect condom availability on campus remains unclear. Those university employees who are found to violate this new gag rule, either by “promoting” abortion, or by dispensing contraception, risk felony convictions, prison time, fines, firing and permanent bans from all state employment.
