Idaho activist explains how abortion laws have affected everything from speech to privacy
Kimra Luna founded Idaho Abortion Rights, an organization based in Boise
Idaho has some of the most restrictive and oppressive laws regulating abortion. It’s affected everything from medical privacy to free speech.
Hospital staffers complain about not knowing whether there will be criminal penalties. Educators worry that they will lose their jobs if they discuss abortion in the classrooms at public universities.
Kimra Luna is the founder of Idaho Abortion Rights, a grassroots group based in Boise that has pushed for more freedom insofar as abortion access. Luna has faced death threats as a result of her advocacy.
“Basically, we're practicing our First Amendment right to talk to people, to help people,” Luna said. “And we've now supported up to 1000 people with getting abortion medications from outside of the state.”
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, Idaho’s public universities, professors who teach, discuss, or write about abortion may now face up to 14 years of imprisonment under Idaho’s abortion censorship law, the No Public Funds for Abortion Act (NPFAA).
The law, which prohibits using any public funds to “promote” or “counsel in favor of abortion,” has shut down academic inquiry about abortion — one of today’s most urgent social, moral, and political issues — across university classrooms and campuses in the state.
The law was designed to prevent doctors from referring people out of state for abortions. Local news affiliate KTVB7 reported six college professors - and their faculty unions - filed a lawsuit with the ACLU against the state regarding the 'chilling effect' created by the act.
Luna’s organization helps pay for abortion medications. That’s the primary method women have used to end unwanted pregnancies. They also travel to Washington and Oregon.
There are other troublesome attempts to abrogate rights afforded to healthcare patients. Attorney General Raúl Labrador signed a document with other AGs to get medical records from doctors outside of states who care for Idaho residents needing reproductive or gender-affirming care. Luna doesn’t expect any states to comply with that.
“Nobody knows if they're going to be using that to try to prosecute people or to try to get doctors to lose their medical licenses or try to sue doctors out of state,” Luna said. “No one really knows. Everyone just knows that it's extremely invasive and honestly just unethical to try to get people's personal medical information.”
Luna also fears some attempts to restrict birth control, particularly IUDs. Some also want to ban emergency contraception. That also has had a chilling effect because some domestic violence organizations don’t provide EC because the administrators fear they will lose state funding for violating abortion laws. Idaho Abortion Rights has 30 distribution centers across the state. They’ve given out more than 14,000 pills.
This isn’t an attempt to be condescending but rather to provide an educational explanation to those who just subscribed who don’t know much about reproductive issues. Abortion medication differs from emergency contraception in that the latter prevents pregnancies from occurring, while mifepristone and misoprostol–the abortion pill regimen–end pregnancies after they have already started. While this is simple and straightforward, it eludes many legislators, particularly Republican men, who conflate the two prescriptions and medications.
Ballot initiatives are a tough go in Idaho. Republicans have sought to suppress voter registration by making it more cumbersome, Luna said. Right now, Democrats are focused on getting Terri Pickens elected as governor. But Luna said she hopes to place the issue directly before Idaho voters.
“That was something we were trying to go for,” Luna said. “But the amount of money it's going to cost to do that will be a $10 million project easily.”