A federal judge on November 8 placed a temporary injunction on an Idaho law that makes it illegal to traffic a minor across state lines for an abortion.
The abortion trafficking law went into effect earlier this year as a way to ensure that minors in the state, where preborn children are protected from abortion, would not be trafficked into nearby Oregon, which has much more liberal abortion laws. In July, several pro-abortion groups filed a lawsuit against the law on the grounds that it violates the constitutional rights of free speech and interstate travel.
In her ruling last week, U.S. Magistrate Judge Debora Grashams said the law “fails to provide fair notice or ascertainable standard of what is and what is not abortion trafficking.” Grasham also said the law potentially violates the First Amendment right to free speech, while dismissing the section of the suit which claimed that the law infringes on the right to interstate travel.
“This lawsuit is not about the right to an abortion. It is about much more,” Grashams wrote. “Namely, long-standing and well-recognized fundamental rights of freedom of speech, expression, due process, and parental rights. These are not competing rights, nor are they at odds.”
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“The state can, and Idaho does, criminalize certain conduct occurring within its own borders such as abortion, kidnapping, and human trafficking,” she went on. “What the state cannot do is craft a statute muzzling the speech and expressive activities of a particular viewpoint with which the state disagrees under the guise of parental rights.”
The ruling comes just weeks after an Idaho man and his mother were charged with kidnapping for transporting the man’s 15-year-old girlfriend across state lines for an abortion. Though abortion activists railed against the state for the supposed “abortion trafficking” violation, the duo were not in fact charged with abortion trafficking, but rather for kidnapping the girl, who wanted to contact her parents about the situation but was prevented by her kidnappers from doing so.
Attorney General Raul Labrador, who is tasked with defending the state’s law in court, has not responded to requests for comment on the judge’s recent ruling. The preliminary injunction will remain in place while the lawsuit continues to be considered by the court.
