Idaho is far from alone in cratering maternity care and doctors fear it will worsen our maternal mortality crisis
A man is suing three women for wrongful death, alleging they helped his now ex-wife end her pregnancy
At the end of this month, an Idaho labor and delivery unit will shutter its doors. It's not exactly an anomaly; it's the third such closure in the state following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which triggered laws in the state that criminalize physicians who provide abortion care and make access to the procedure impossible.
As of April 1, 2024, West Valley Medical Center in Caldwell, Idaho, will no longer deliver infants. According to a statement on the hospital’s website, the closure was an outcome the institution “worked for years to avoid.” While West Valley Medical Center didn’t cite restrictive abortion laws as the reason for the closure, Dr. Kara Cadwallader, who is a family medicine physician in Idaho, told Salon in a phone interview that providers feel as if their “hands are tied” and they can’t do their jobs in a state where abortion is completely banned (with only a narrow exception in which an abortion is "necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman") and where physicians face jail time for providing a standard part of care.
Elections have consequences. This is just the latest step in the FAFO process for Idaho.
First, it was the clinics in the North Idaho, and now the rot is moving southward. More and more women and children will be affected by this attitude of anti humanism that focuses on declaring women property of the state.
Women in Idaho should be looking to move somewhere that doesn't consider them owned by the legislature. Good luck to you if you're stuck in Idaho. The scenery is beautiful, but the rights are contracting.
It's not their sole responsibility to bare. Men should feel ashamed to live in the state and every father should be working OT to protect their daughters.
This is sad, and seems intentional by the GOP. If they can get people to leave states with shitty laws and force them to concentrate in a select few states then more states will end up red with the same amount of disproportionate representation. I personally think this is a broader plan to stay in power even as demographics trend away from supporting the GOP.
Wyoming gets the same number of senators as CA. A few years back with COVID relos to TX I was getting hopeful we might see it turn progressive in my lifetime but things like this will make relo a non-starter. After all, who wants to live somewhere that operates like the Taliban?
The US is far more like the EU than it is like Britain or Canada, being a Republic of aligned States. We have a body representing the states themselves (the Senate, and each state is equal and gets 2 Senators), a body representing the People in those states (the House of Representatives, which has been capped for total size and is no longer equally proportional but serves the same purpose), and a body representing the entire Union (the Executive branch - the President, Vice President, Cabinet, etc.).
On top of that, states with much less people in them (e.g. Idaho) “count more” in Presidential elections due to a historical wrench in the machinery put there to serve slave owners. It’s called “The electoral college” but it’s really “let’s keep slaves college”.
Yeah they kept that in place after the slave states fought to destroy America and were defeated. Which, in retrospect, was really stupid.
Yes and no. The US system is a bastardized version of the British system but with States replacing nobility. So the UK has a House of Lords which corresponds to the US Senate, and a House of Commons that corresponds to the US Congress. The number of congressional representatives each state gets is based on population as in theory Congress represents the people of each state. The Senate in contrast has a fixed number of representatives per state and in theory represents the will of the state. The whole thing gets a little muddled because senators are still elected by the people of the state, but since they aren't based on population so you can play shenanigans like what's being discussed in this thread.
Realistically the Senate should be abolished, it's entire reason for existing is fundamentally flawed.
This was a good read on a very depressing topic. It will be shameful how bad things will have to become for women in Idaho, and some of the other Southern states the article referenced, before the right will ever see the error in their ways.
They will never see the error of their ways. It has literally never happened. The liberalization of society and the ostracizing of fundamentalism is the only thing that has ever had an appreciable affect. Punishing those in power who push these ideas into the mainstream is the solution.
I try to have empathy but lately I've honestly run all out of fucks to give these people who live in a dumbass theocracy, even the ones who vote against it.