Posted on 09/13/2023 10:44:04 AM PDT by thegagline
Earlier this year, Jennifer Adkins learned during a 12-week ultrasound that her second child — nicknamed “Spooky” because she was due near Halloween — was unlikely to survive her pregnancy.
Adkins said doctors told her the likely miscarriage could result in mirror syndrome, a rare disorder that would cause her to experience the same life-threatening symptoms as the fetus. Adkins recalled that her medical providers were “visibly distraught” when they told her Idaho law prevented them from performing an abortion. After traveling to Oregon for a legal abortion, Adkins said she and her husband struggled to pay their mortgage.
Now Adkins is suing the state alongside a group of doctors and three Idaho other women who were also denied abortions despite dangerous pregnancy complications. The legal complaint asks a court to clarify the circumstances that are grounds for a legal abortion in Idaho, which bans the procedure in all cases unless it was necessary to prevent the death of a pregnant patient.
***
Idaho is among three states targeted for legal challenges by the Center for Reproductive Rights, a national nonprofit that advocates for abortion rights. The group also filed complaints on behalf of women who were denied abortions and doctors in Tennessee and Oklahoma. ***
This year, the Legislature passed a bill that clarified a few exceptions to the law. Physicians negotiated with anti-abortion lawmakers and Idaho Chooses Life, an anti-abortion group that authored Idaho’s abortion ban, to make exceptions clearer. Previously, doctors who performed an abortion to save the life of the mother or terminate a pregnancy that resulted from incest or rape were granted affirmative defenses ***Now, doctors are exempt from prosecution in those instances.
Physicians also tried to add an exception that would allow abortions for the health of a pregnant patient. Lawmakers rejected it. ***
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Regarding this particular story, there are several tells that it is a set up- potentially fabricated or embellished
Adkins, the pregnant woman, referred to her child as “spooky.” This is one of those cutesy asides that are too clever by half. This is an attempt to humanize Adkins and portray her as witty in an NPR kind of way.
Second, there is an assertion that Adkins had the extremely rare “mirror syndrome.” The pathology of this syndrome is unknown. It is often misdiagnosed, undiagnosed due to low incidence and lack of awareness of its constellation of symptoms/features. There is high maternal morbidity which would trigger the “prevent the death of the mother” exception to the abortion law.
The third questionable aspect of this story is that the cost of the abortion resulted in the Adkins struggling to pay their mortgage. This is an example of the financial hardship canard. According to Planned Parenthood-Oregon, “ The average cost of a first trimester in-clinic abortion at Planned Parenthood is about $600. The cost of a second trimester abortion at Planned Parenthood varies depending on how many weeks pregnant you are. The average ranges from about $715 earlier in the second trimester to $1,500-2,000 later in the second trimester”. Often insurance will cover this procedure. In addition, Adkins could have availed herself to a payment plan.
The final tell, is that Adkins is represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, a pro abortion advocacy group. Adkins and that group didn’t just find each other by happenstance. Nor did some intrepid reporter seek out this story. Rather, it is the resultant work of the agenda driven Adkins, the reporter, and the marketing department of the Center for Reproductive Rights. Native advertising.
Flat out lie. It is legal in a hospital at the 12 week mark. But you can’t run down a clinic or an office not set up like a surgical center.
“TITLE 18
CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS
CHAPTER 6
ABORTION AND CONTRACEPTIVES
18-608. CERTAIN ABORTIONS PERMITTED — CONDITIONS AND GUIDELINES. (1) Abortions shall only be lawful if and when performed in a hospital or in a physician’s regular office or a clinic, which office or clinic is properly staffed and equipped for the performance of such procedures and respecting which the responsible physician or physicians have made satisfactory arrangements with one (1) or more acute care hospitals within reasonable proximity thereof providing for the prompt availability of hospital care as may be required due to complications or emergencies that might arise.
(2) An abortion performed upon a woman who is in the second trimester of pregnancy shall only be lawful if the same is performed in a hospital.
(3) An abortion performed upon a woman who is in the third trimester of pregnancy shall only be lawful if the same is performed in a hospital and, in the judgment of the attending physician, corroborated by a like opinion of a consulting physician concurring therewith, either is necessary for the preservation of the life of such woman or, if not performed, such pregnancy would terminate in birth or delivery of a fetus unable to survive. Third-trimester abortions undertaken for preservation of the life of a pregnant patient, as permitted by this subsection, shall, consistent with accepted medical practice and with the well-being and safety of such patient, be performed in a manner consistent with preservation of any reasonable potential for survival of a viable fetus.
(4) Nothing in this section shall make legal any abortion that is otherwise illegal under any other law of this state, including section 18-622, Idaho Code.
History:”
Around here, the women screaming loudest for abortion, at least on the news, are in no way ever going to need one. Not no how.
Banner headlines on front page of this morning’s Tulsa World had a similar story of a new suit in Oklahoma. Dems know how work lawfare and judge shop.
“Adkins said doctors told her the likely miscarriage could result in mirror syndrome, a rare disorder that would cause her to experience the same life-threatening symptoms as the fetus.”
The conditions mentioned in that sentence seem to be included in the exception the Idaho abortion law accepts.
Either lawyers for the Idaho medical facilities misreprented the law (and if they did, then what was their motive?), or the litigants suing the state are misrepresenting either circumstances or what the heatlh care providers said they could or could not do. One way or another, something in the story is amiss from the options that seem possible under Idaho law.
It’s BS from the get-go. This whole sob-story is just a pretext to get the baby-murder machine rolling again.
Democrats like to kill babies. It’s really that simple.
Thank you for analyzing this suspicious case.
There has been a big effort lately to portray all abortions as either necessary for the life of the mother or tragic necessities due to gross fetal abnormality. And lawsuits claiming to represent women who are supposedly prevented from having an abortion to relieve an immediate threat to her life seem to be proliferating now.
The abortion industry is desperate to hang on to its blood profits.
Whenever I see a story of an abortion that just had to take place because the fetus wouldn’t live, I always point out that the fraction of abortions that take place because of fetal abnormalities is small and that most abortions are performed on healthy babies for birth control purposes. We need to fight back against the abortion advocacy narrative.
How far is it to Oregon? When I grew up in Idaho, Oregon was a bordering state. Has that changed? How could it be that expensive to get to Oregon? Driving from Soda Springs to Astoria is 12 hours. That's about as far apart as you can get and still be in Idaho and Oregon.
Don’t want a baby?
Then choose not to do that thing that makes a baby.
Yeah, the mirror syndrome thing sounds like BS. She’s just trying to make a quick buck via a lawsuit.
It is certainly plausible that the suit is a Lawfare gambit, designed to broaden the rules on “exceptions” until abortion is defacto legal.
It is also plausible that Idaho physicians fear the consequences of making the call — that the abortion is required to save the life of the mother — without clarity on what evidence is required to determine it. Call it wrong and the patient dies. Call it right and it will ever be speculative whether the woman’s life was truly in danger. As written, the law creates a bias against making the call for saving the mother’s life. I doubt that was anyone’s intention.
The physicians risk being tried, imprisoned, and their careers destroyed even in circumstances where they and the mother would greatly prefer a healthy birth to an abortion. Legislatures should do a better job of anticipating problems like this and curing them in their laws, rather of taking the cowardly path of punting to unelected judges.
I agree that one of the problems with too many laws is too litle transparency, too little clarity on the law’s implications.
In my view, a lot of federal law is filled with that kind of ambiguity, intentionally, to give more power (legal interpretation) to the DOJ and the whole administrative state.
If I were POTUS I would issue a an executive order directing all federal offices with law enforcment or regulatory enforcement powers, that they cannot interpret ambiguous language in the laws and regulations, but instead must inform Congress that the law is unenforceable, because interpreting the law is tantamount to writing the law and the executive branch has no Constitutional authority to write the law.
Baby was wanted. Pregnancy was complicated.
It has different names but mirror syndrome basically the mother’s body reacting negatively to either grave illness of the fetus or deformation. If the fetus becomes incompatible with gestation, it puts the woman’s life at risk. This isn’t abortion as contraception.
We don’t have the technology to relocate a fetus to a non human analog for development like a machine or dna altered pig for example. Maturation chambers are the stuff of scifi.
Can’t pay the mortgage because of a relatively inexpensive out of state abortion seems like BS. If they didn’t have money saved, did they need another child to start with? Kids cost a lot more than a one time payment of 600-1000.
Nice breakdown, very well done.👍
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