Too Hot a Potato Even for Idaho

The past week has not been a good one for oppressively restrictive abortion laws: In Guam, where the law prohibits abortion unless pregnancy endangers the life of the mother, prosecutors wisely dropped charges against an attorney for telling women who wanted abortions they could go to Hawaii. In Idaho, Gov. Cecil D. Andrus, who personally opposes abortion, had to ask himself a difficult question about that state’s proposed abortion law: What would happen in the case of a 12-year-old child made pregnant through incest, who out of fear, ignorance or whatever failed to report her condition to authorities? What would happen under the nasty anti-abortion measure passed by Idaho’s Legislature is that the girl would have to bear the baby. Either that, or invite legal charges against a doctor who acted to terminate her pregnancy. The victim of an unspeakable violation of her person would thus be victimized a second time, this time by a state determined to deny her basic rights.

And so Andrus honorably and rightly vetoed what would have been the nation’s most restrictive limits on access to abortion. Under that proposal, abortion would have been legal only if a pregnancy resulted from a rape that was reported to police within seven days; for incest where the victim was under the age of 18 and reported the crime to the police, or where a serious fetal defect or a serious physical threat to the mother existed. The measure would have outlawed more than 90% of the approximately 1,650 abortions performed each year in Idaho.

Matching the bill’s utter lack of compassion was its undisguised opportunism. It had been drafted specifically to appeal to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, believed to be the court’s swing vote on abortion, who has indicated that she could support harsh abortion restrictions so long as a woman choosing abortion wasn’t held criminally liable. The Idaho measure catered to that concern by putting the legal burden on doctors who perform abortions. Cynical? You bet. Andrus has given this mean-spirited bill the fate it deserved.