‘Beginning of an erosion of rights’: Protesters rally at Idaho Capitol over abortion news
Around 150 people gathered in downtown Boise on Tuesday night to protest the expected nullification of abortion rights in the United States.
Demonstrators rallied at Boise’s City Hall with signs and a bullhorn before marching down Capitol Boulevard, through Grove Plaza and back up 8th Street to the steps of the Idaho Statehouse.
Protests cropped up across the nation following a seismic revelation on Monday night: a leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion showing that a majority of justices support outright overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that found abortion to be a constitutionally protected right.
The leaked draft, published by Politico, shows that five of the court’s conservative justices planned to vote with the decision’s author, Samuel Alito, who wrote that Roe “was egregiously wrong from the start.”
A final decision on the abortion case — called Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — is expected in June.
If the law of the land is overturned by the court’s right wing, it would become incumbent upon states to make decisions on regulating abortion themselves. In Idaho, a trigger law already in place would effectively ban all abortions the moment the Roe precedent is overturned. Another law, currently on hold while it is reviewed by the Idaho Supreme Court, would allow family members to sue abortion providers for at least $20,000 if the procedure is performed after a “fetal heartbeat” is detected.
“I grew up very conservative and learned that there’s more gray area in the world than conservative policies and viewpoints make room for,” Tami Dooley, a Boise resident, told the Idaho Statesman at the rally. “They came after trans kids, now they’re coming after women. Next will be marriage.”
Dooley referenced a bill in the Idaho Legislature targeting transgender youth and her fear that overturning Roe will lead to further changes to the rights people have in the U.S.
“This is just the beginning of an erosion of rights,” Dayton Uttinger, a Meridian resident and another rallygoer, told the Statesman.
Uttinger added that “the Court is just completely disregarding past jurisprudence, and with every step here they’re becoming more illegitimate.”
Legal doctrine generally emphasizes maintaining the precedent of past decisions, although it’s not unprecedented for the high court to reverse a previous ruling.
The text of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion is not final, the court has said. Nor is the position of each justice. As decisions are written, drafts are often circulated among the nine justices.
Tracy Olson, who stood on the steps of Idaho’s Capitol, said she wants Congress to codify the abortion right as decided in Roe, saying she was concerned that it would be people at society’s margins who will be most affected by a decision eradicating the rights women have had the past 50 years.
While states like Idaho would immediately ban abortions if the precedent is overturned, other states, such as Oregon and Washington, have laws explicitly protecting a right to an abortion, meaning that Idaho residents could travel out of state to obtain the procedure.
On Tuesday, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he planned to bring federal legislation protecting the right to an abortion to a vote in the Senate, even though Democrats appear unlikely to have sufficient votes.
“It’s all being dismantled, it seems, so quickly and easily,” Olson said. “It takes your breath away.”
This story was originally published May 3, 2022 at 9:11 PM.
