Thousands rally at Idaho Capitol for abortion rights during ‘crisis moment’
Before an energized crowd Saturday, a former Idaho state senator encouraged attendees from the steps of the Idaho Capitol to keep fighting for abortion rights, despite the expected overturning of the constitutional right next month.
“We have been running this race for a long time, and we are not tired yet,” said Cherie Buckner-Webb, who retired in 2020.
Thousands of people attended a pro-choice rally Saturday in Boise to protest the U.S. Supreme Court’s upcoming decision, which is expected to come in June and have nearly immediate effects in Idaho.
While abortion rights have been constitutionally protected in the U.S. since 1973, a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion indicates that a majority of justices on the high court support reversing the landmark decision.
In Idaho, state “trigger laws” already on the books would quickly ban abortions outright. Another law, which is currently under review at the Idaho Supreme Court, would allow family members to sue abortion providers for damages if fetal electrical activity has been detected.
Speakers at Saturday’s rally called the expected move an assault on women’s rights and urged attendees to mobilize for this year’s upcoming elections.
“We are at a crisis moment,” said Mistie DelliCarpini-Tolman, the state director of Planned Parenthood, a national nonprofit that operates abortion clinics. She added that she thought no politician or justice should be able to make decisions about “our own medical decisions.”
A Boise 16-year-old, Kaitlyn Benoit, said she urged Idaho politicians to pay attention to Saturday’s crowd and supporters of abortion rights.
“I’m not even an adult yet and there’s a risk of my rights being taken,” she said.
Several Democratic leaders attended the rally, including Sen. Melissa Wintrow, of Boise, House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel, of Boise, and the city’s mayor, Lauren McLean. Assistant Minority Leader Lauren Necochea, D-Boise, spoke about her family’s personal experience with abortion.
Necochea’s great-grandmother was widowed at the age of 25 with three children, she said, and remarried a man who turned out to be abusive. When she got pregnant, she attempted to perform an abortion herself, and died at St. Luke’s Health System in Boise.
“I’m so grateful that Planned Parenthood and neighboring states are preparing to serve Idaho patients safely,” Necochea said, referring to ongoing efforts by pro-choice advocates to help Idahoans seek abortions outside of the state. “It is immoral that the economic class that can afford missed work and a trip across the border will have reproductive rights that are being stripped away from everyone else.”
Necochea also noted that the Legislature’s efforts may not stop at abortion. On May 6, House State Affairs Committee Chairman Brent Crane, R-Nampa, said that he would potentially hold hearings about banning Plan B, a form of emergency contraception, in an interview alongside Necochea on Idaho Public Television.
Crane also said he was “not for certain yet” what he thought about banning intrauterine devices, or IUDs, which are a long-lasting form of contraception.
The following day, Crane revised his comments, telling the Statesman that he would not support hearings banning contraception — including IUDs — generally.
“They can pry my IUD out of my cold, dead uterus,” Necochea said.
In an interview with the Statesman, Rubel, the House minority leader, said that the size of Saturday’s protest “speaks to, even in deep red Idaho, how profoundly people value bodily autonomy.”
Planned Parenthood estimated that as many as 5,000 people attended Saturday’s protest, according to a news release. Idaho State Police and Boise Police cordoned off the block of Jefferson Street in front of the Capitol. After a set of speeches, rally-goers marched around the perimeter of the Capitol before returning to Cecil D. Andrus Park.
“I think people have grown complacent in fighting for (abortion rights) at the state level, thinking that the Supreme Court was going to have our backs, but those days are over,” Rubel said.
She noted that pursuing a legislative solution through the state’s ballot initiative process would be the most likely path to counteracting the current laws, but that it would mean waiting at least two years for the next election cycle.
In the meantime, the state’s Republican and Democratic primaries are on Tuesday, and the general election is in November.
Rubel added that she thinks it is ironic that Idaho’s right-wing “thought it was wildly intrusive” for COVID-19 vaccinations to be required, even at private companies, while at the same time advocating for forbidding women from seeking abortions.
Around a dozen counter-protesters also attended Saturday’s rally, and some engaged in heated debate with pro-choice advocates. One anti-abortion activist carried a flag reading “Trump 2024.”
Life before Roe
Ellen Hall, a Boise resident, grew up in South Carolina before Roe v. Wade — the court’s 1973 decision that made abortions constitutionally protected — was the law of the land, she told the Statesman.
When she was in high school and college, she said, she had friends who had illegal abortions, and others with parents who flew them out of the country to receive the procedure. One friend of hers, she said, chose not to have an abortion, instead choosing to marry her boyfriend and raise a child “that they were not mature enough to care for.”
She said the same politicians who are opposed to abortion also “legislate against welfare and contraception.”
“They call themselves pro-life, but they ... are pro-birth,” she said. “They don’t care anything about the child that is born.”
If abortion becomes illegal in Idaho, Hall said, she would keep fighting and help women obtain the procedure.
“What are they gonna do?” she said. “Put us all in jail?”
