Rebecca Gibron: Why Washingtonians should care about abortion rights in Idaho

By Rebecca Gibron

We all know that despite sharing a border, Idaho and Washington have starkly different politics. When it comes to abortion access, and other essential life-saving sexual, reproductive and gender-affirming care, the divide is night and day.

Washington state is doing everything it can to provide a safe haven for patients seeking reproductive health care no matter where they are from. Meanwhile, on the east side of our shared border, Idaho is going far beyond banning abortion, in an all out attempt to muzzle Idahoans by censoring what medical professionals can say, and criminalizing people who leave the state to get abortion care.

I’ve lived in Idaho for most of my life. I first visited a Planned Parenthood health center in Boise as a teenager, desperate for facts about my own body and control over my destiny.

I know Idaho is easy to ignore – we’re often labeled as an outlier full of conspiracy theorists and white nationalists. But all Idahoans, regardless of political views, deserve medically accurate information and access to the care that can save their lives.

This week, we were granted an injunction to stop Idaho’s attorney general from prosecuting doctors and nurses for referring patients to Washington and other states for abortion care. We won this round, but this attorney general is deliberately testing the courts and the public to see how far he can go to limit our freedom.

So why should Washingtonians pay attention to what’s happening in Idaho? Because extremist attorneys general in states across the country are coordinating with each other and using the same playbook. This is not the time to shake heads and turn away. We must come together across ZIP codes, race, class and politics to fight back and stop these fanatics from pushing us all the way back into the 1800s.

It’s not enough to rely on safe haven states, like Washington. The stakes are too high. We must protect the rights of doctors and nurses everywhere to give care without fear of being prosecuted or having their licenses revoked by overzealous anti-abortion states. Patients and their families should be free from fear of prosecution for seeking information and medical care they need. We should not have to worry our private medical records could land in the hands of people bent on criminalizing us for accessing health care.

Washington’s top leaders are in solidarity with people who can get pregnant, youth in crisis and those seeking life-saving reproductive, sexual and gender-affirming care. Washington’s attorney general is leading the charge, successfully challenging Idaho’s inhumane abortion laws and legal opinions. Just this year, Washington lawmakers passed five major pieces of legislation expanding reproductive health rights and protecting gender-affirming care in a time when we’ve never seen more attacks against the LGBTQ+ community.

Planned Parenthood won’t be bullied, and we won’t let our patients or providers be bullied. In the face of all the confusion and fear caused by Idaho’s laws, we are making sure people know what their rights are. We put up big, bright pink billboards in Idaho to remind people they can legally access abortion care in Washington and Oregon. And we’re in the courtrooms, defending our patients’ and providers’ rights with all of our might. No matter what extremist politicians do, Planned Parenthood won’t back down.

Washingtonians should be proud of the actions their leaders are taking. It’s critical to send a signal to anti-abortion zealots across the country that they can’t get away with violating our constitutional rights to privacy and bodily autonomy. Let’s stop Idaho’s extremist attacks on abortion, reproductive and gender-affirming care, and our rights to privacy and free speech in their tracks.

Rebecca Gibron, of Boise, is CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky.