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MOSCOW, Idaho — Mackenzie Davidson grew up in a Mormon household and sheepishly admits she knew little about pregnancy.
“This is embarrassing,” she said, sitting outside a café along a street thronged with students in this college town. “But I didn’t know that you had to have sex to have kids until I was 13 or 14.”
She’s a writer for the University of Idaho student newspaper, The Argonaut, and was asked recently to report on a new law. It’s now a crime to help a teen under 18 leave the state for an abortion or obtain medication abortion pills without parental consent — including when the girl has been sexually assaulted or raped by a family member or parent. Gov. Brad Little, a Republican, in signing the bill, wrote that the law does not “limit an adult woman from obtaining an abortion in another state.”
Davidson, 19, reached out to interview state Rep. Barbara Ehardt, a Republican co-sponsor of the bill, who touted her “Christian-based” attitude during her campaign.
“She kept saying that it was about parental rights,” Davidson said. But “the thing that really caught my attention was the fact that they were calling it ‘abortion trafficking.’”
The law creates a crime of “abortion trafficking” and criminalizes the “recruiting, harboring, or transporting” of minors without parental consent. In a floor speech before the Idaho Legislature voted on the bill, Ehardt said, “We are only looking to protect our children.”
Idaho’s “teen travel ban,” as it’s known here, took effect May 5, nearly 11 months after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion. Any adult, including an aunt, grandparent, or sibling, convicted of violating the criminal statute faces up to five years in prison. Under a separate state law, family members of the pregnant minor and …
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MOSCOW, Idaho — Mackenzie Davidson grew up in a Mormon household and sheepishly admits she knew little about pregnancy.
“This is embarrassing,” she said, sitting outside a café along a street thronged with students in this college town. “But I didn’t know that you had to have sex to have kids until I was 13 or 14.”
She’s a writer for the University of Idaho student newspaper, The Argonaut, and was asked recently to report on a new law. It’s now a crime to help a teen under 18 leave the state for an abortion or obtain medication abortion pills without parental consent — including when the girl has been sexually assaulted or raped by a family member or parent. Gov. Brad Little, a Republican, in signing the bill, wrote that the law does not “limit an adult woman from obtaining an abortion in another state.”
Davidson, 19, reached out to interview state Rep. Barbara Ehardt, a Republican co-sponsor of the bill, who touted her “Christian-based” attitude during her campaign.
“She kept saying that it was about parental rights,” Davidson said. But “the thing that really caught my attention was the fact that they were calling it ‘abortion trafficking.’”
The law creates a crime of “abortion trafficking” and criminalizes the “recruiting, harboring, or transporting” of minors without parental consent. In a floor speech before the Idaho Legislature voted on the bill, Ehardt said, “We are only looking to protect our children.”
Idaho’s “teen travel ban,” as it’s known here, took effect May 5, nearly 11 months after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion. Any adult, including an aunt, grandparent, or sibling, convicted of violating the criminal statute faces up to five years in prison. Under a separate state law, family members of the pregnant minor and …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]