Ninth Circuit Reviews Idaho Abortion Ban
The lower court judgment was handed down after Bannock County resident Jennie Linn McCormack filed a federal class action alleging she was charged in 2010 with having an “unlawful abortion” in her second trimester.
According to court records, McCormack, a single mother with three children, was living on $200 to $250 a month when she discovered that she was pregnant. With no abortion clinics in the eight southeastern Idaho counties, including Bannock, she faced a trek to the nearest abortion clinics in Salt Lake City.
Even if McCormack did make it to Salt Lake City, she would have had to spend hundreds of dollars for the procedure. McCormack decided to take a cheaper option, taking five abortion pills her sister had ordered off the Internet, it was alleged.
McCormack later was questioned by Pocatello police officers, who had received a tip that a woman was keeping a fetus in a box on her back porch, according to court records.
On May 17, 2011 Bannock County prosecutor Mark Hiedeman charged McCormack with the felony of an unlawful abortion, under Idaho’s abortion law.
Just over three months later, a magistrate judge dismissed the case at a preliminary hearing.
More: Courthouse News Service