It’s hard to find anyone who wants higher teen pregnancy rates, but look no further than the second floor of the Idaho Statehouse where Attorney General Raúl Labrador plots his next move in a campaign to restore second-class citizenship to Idaho’s women and girls.
Labrador is hardly acting on a popular mandate. Few Idahoans would suggest that a decrease in teen-pregnancy rates is a bad thing. Fewer still would argue a lower teen pregnancy rate actually harms our state.
Labrador joined the attorneys-general of Missouri and Kansas in a lawsuit to challenge the prescription medication, mifepristone, the tested and safe drug used for medication abortion.
Labrador’s argument? Mifepristone lowers “birth rates for teenage mothers” and contributes to a population loss for Idaho, along with “diminishment of political representation and loss of federal funds.”
For AG Labrador, both of these potential “harms” are selectively defined. Labrador is happy to diminish political representation in litigation against the open primaries initiative, and most of his ideological allies in the legislature delight in refusing federal funds to feed children from low-income families during the summer. These “harms” are problems only so far as they obstruct Labrador’s extremist agenda.
Teen pregnancies are typically marked by increased risk of maternal mortality, social isolation, shame, coercion, disruption of education, upending of family and friend structures, inhibition of early professional earning power, and concealment of sexual abuse or rape. Why would we want this for our girls?
This is not an unprecedented development in Idaho’s far-right GOP effort to control the basic human autonomy of Idaho’s women and girls. During a legislative preview earlier this year, the Senate president pro-tempore characterized the strict anti-abortion bans as an answer to our state’s workforce shortage: more babies = more workers. The extremists’ desired role for Idaho’s women and girls is simple and singular: to make babies.
Labrador wants the U.S. Supreme Court to block Idahoans from obtaining mifepristone because mifepristone decreases Idaho’s teen birth rate, and that is against the state’s interest. Labrador argued that an increase in teen births is good — but it is a benefit explicitly for the state. Not for the people of Idaho, but the government itself. It is as dystopian as it sounds. This outrageous and unhinged viewpoint should be alarming for all Idahoans across the political spectrum.
Individuals do not exist for the benefit of our government – our government exists for the benefit of us.
Women and girls don’t exist for the singular purpose of procreation. We exist to pursue our own happiness.
Labrador is no stranger to litigation which endangers women. In April, Labrador’s team argued in the case of Moyle v. United States that the State of Idaho had the right to prohibit women from receiving abortion care in medical emergencies. Labrador’s team hoped to stop any pregnant Idahoan from receiving abortion care even when their health, and possibly even their life, was on the line.
Labrador also joined other extremist attorneys-general in a lawsuit against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act which requires workplace protections for pregnant workers; Labrador sued the EEOC because these protections may also apply to abortion, even if care was medically necessary due to complications that threatened health and safety.
Unfortunately, Labrador’s attacks on emergency care and now mifepristone are part of a larger Republican Party culture where extremists have taken over and abandoned principles of freedom and limited government, and introduced bills on the taxpayer dime that further a fringe, extremist world-view. If you are looking for a party that protects our freedoms, opportunities and children, the Idaho GOP is the last place you should search.