BOISE, Idaho — Planned Parenthood has filed a lawsuit challenging an Idaho law that criminalizes abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, the third lawsuit the organization has filed over Idaho abortion laws in recent months.
Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky filed the petition with the Idaho Supreme Court on Monday. The petition asks the court to declare Idaho’s fetal heartbeat protection law illegal and unenforceable.
The law, which was passed last year, would make it illegal to perform an abortion after a so-called fetal heartbeat is detected, typically around six weeks of pregnancy and before many women know they’re pregnant. Medical experts have said the heartbeat is more accurately described as electrical activity, because the structures of a human heart have not yet formed at six weeks’ gestation.
