Lawyer talks about Idaho trafficking law
Wendy Heipt represents plaintiffs in a case which seeks to nullify law that forbids helping minors get abortions.
One of the lawyers arguing against Idaho’s abortion trafficking law spoke with me about the case.
Wendy Heipt is senior reproductive justice counsel for Legal Voice, a Seattle-based organization that provides legal representation on a variety of issues, including challenging antiabortion laws. She is the lawyer for the plaintiffs in Matsumoto v. Labrador, which concerns an Idaho abortion trafficking statute that calls for punishment of up to five years in prison for any adult who helps a minor get an abortion and then conceals it from their parents. The law did not exempt abortion providers from another state or telemedicine providers who send abortion medication to minors who live in Idaho.
“The system is on the verge of collapse because they keep criminalizing doctors and helpers for just providing standard of care,” Heipt said of Idaho’s situation. “And I would think the state of Idaho's money is better spent on providing a decent education and fixing roads and not trying to pass unconstitutional laws that just further isolate the people in their state that depend on others for help.”
After the Dobbs decision, the floodgates on abortion laws opened, according to Heipt. They developed a new concept called abortion trafficking, which portrayed young women who get assistance as being coerced into ending their pregnancy. Typically, the term trafficking is associated with drugs or the forcing of women into prostitution.
“It's a brand new way to look at abortion, and it's a way for states to overreach, to try and stop people from what they can talk about, to try and stop people from traveling from one state to the other,” Heipt said. “And in my opinion, it's really a threat to democracy, because our republic is based on the fact that we're citizens of all the states.”
The state legislature passed a law that called for up to five years in prison for helping a minor through what was known as harboring, recruiting and transporting them to get an abortion without their parental consent. Even at the time of the law’s passage, its sponsor and other lawmakers involved knew that the wording was ambiguous and would need clarification from a court.
“It's poorly written, half on purpose, because most people do not want to break the law,” Heipt said. “So when they're unsure of when their conduct becomes criminal, they step back from the line, which means people will be doing less of what they're entitled to do when a law is not clearly written.”
In Sept. 2023, the Idaho District Court put the law on hold. Since then, the state of Idaho has appealed that decision three times. First, it returned to the District Court, where the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. Then, the state appealed on an emergency basis to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which held a hearing in May 2024. The plaintiffs won again.
Circuit Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote the majority opinion that ruled harboring or transporting minors doesn’t qualify as speech. But insofar as the recruiting aspect, the majority ruled that advising, encouraging, counseling, educating, or protesting for abortion rights was protected by the First Amendment. It is legal for a resident to get an abortion where it is permitted by law. They remanded the case to the district court to further specify what it meant to harbor, transport, and recruit with its injunction against the law.
“Once that court issues an injunction, then I can tell you exactly what's allowed and what's not allowed,” Heipt said. “But right now, it's speculation.”
It's important to know that this round of court filings and decisions only deals with the injunction and whether it should remain in place. It doesn’t deal with the merits of the law. What that means is that the case will go back to the district court once the meaning of the law is clear to the extent that they can review its constitutionality.
Parental notification laws have always been flawed in their reasoning. And this law, which specifically deals with minors, is the same. In many cases, teenagers and adolescents have abusive parents that may in fact be the parent of their unwanted child.
“What we're doing is isolating the most vulnerable in Idaho,” Heipt said. “We're isolating minors who already don't have enough resources, and we're taking away their only lifeline, which is trusted adults that they can turn to in moments of crisis or decision.“