By Dr. Leah Fleming
I am a pediatrician and a medical geneticist. I am voting No on Prop 1.
Since I came to Idaho in 2015, a former WWAMI graduate just out of training at the National Institutes of Health, I have cared for, learned from, laughed and cried with thousands of patients and their families, people from every part of this state and of every conceivable belief system and demographic, as we sought a diagnosis and access to rare treatments, and grappled with the uncertainty of what the future might or might not hold. I have seen our community develop perinatal and pediatric palliative care programs that provide loving and life-affirming care, as children and their families go through unimaginably difficult circumstances.
As a physician, sister and friend, I want our obstetricians free to provide the best possible care for every pregnant woman, balancing health, survival and risk for both mother and developing child, as they have always done. I have heard the stress from colleagues the past four years. Yet, Proposition 1 is not the bill for Idaho. It is too extreme.
Current Idaho law allows for abortion in cases of rape and incest in the first trimester, and allows for medically appropriate care of ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages (in medical language, “spontaneous abortions”). It permits abortion at any stage of pregnancy if needed to save the life of a mother, and allows her physician to make that judgment without need for her risk of death to be certain or imminent. Our law allows parents to surrender a baby that they do not feel called or able to care for to a baby box or other safe place. Birth control and IVF are legal.
Prop 1 guts protection for the unborn, legalizing abortion for any reason until a fetus can survive outside the womb, undermines parental rights and weakens the requirements for who can perform an abortion, potentially endangering women.
Prop 1 removes the need for parental consent for abortion for a minor. For every parent who is abusive and dangerous, there are many more parents who have the best interest of their children at heart, and are the best and most natural protection for their children in a vulnerable time. I don’t want a law that allows an abuser, a trafficker or a boyfriend’s parents to coerce a child to have an abortion before her mother or father even knows she is pregnant.
Prop 1 would legalize abortion for any reason until a fetus has “a significant likelihood of sustained survival outside the uterus without extraordinary medical measures,” determined on a case by case basis. “Sustained survival” and “extraordinary measures” are not defined and open to debate. At minimum, this legalizes abortion late into the second trimester, and in some cases to the due date.
So the 24-week female fetus, who already recognizes the voice of her mother, but cannot live outside the womb without breathing support, medication, IV nutrition? Her parents want a boy and not a girl.
The 31-week boy with a heart defect, who will need major surgery?
The nearly term infant, who due to a genetic condition, will need a feeding tube for nutrition and who may have a shorter life?
This goes far beyond Idaho’s pre-Dobbs abortion law.
I love practicing medicine in this state. I care for people who are trying hard in the midst of sometimes heartbreaking situations to make the best possible choices for their families. Idahoans who are truly amazing, and who inspire me.
We must not let Idaho go from a state that values women and babies, to one where we legalize deaths that we would consider inhumane in every other setting, in the name of health care. Woman, girls and their families deserve access to safe, equitable healthcare for themselves and their unborn children; they deserve honesty about our current law. They deserve better than Prop 1. Vote no.
Dr. Leah Fleming is a pediatrician and medical geneticist practicing in Boise.
Click HERE to read the article on the Idaho Statesman.