Across Idaho, doctors are leaving, looking for states where politics don't dictate how they practice medicine. The consequences of Idaho's anti-choice laws hit Sandpoint fast and hard, hollowing out medical care for women within months. For years, the town had a maternity ward that delivered as many as 350 babies every year – now it has nothing. The OB-GYN ward shut down this spring and doctors have been fleeing the state in a steady stream, seeking shelter in places where their work doesn't put them at risk of criminal charges or big lawsuits.
It's become a gamble, getting pregnant and giving birth in a place that no longer has a maternity unit or any obstetricians. Sandpoint is small, fewer than 10,000 people, but it's been a medical hub for a rural region of 50,000 in north Idaho, Montana and Washington.
For people like Sanders, pregnancy care in town is no longer an option. This is what happens when a state government that's been itching to ban abortion enacts some of the most restrictive laws in the country and ensnares all of reproductive health and a good share of routine medical care in its dragnet. But the women of Sandpoint are clear about one thing they want others to know: this can happen anywhere in the post-Roe United States. Nowhere is as safe as you might believe and the battle won't stop at state borders.
Idaho is one of several states that had trigger laws: immediate abortion restrictions that went into effect when Roe v Wade fell a year ago. In August of 2022, the state enacted a near-total ban on abortion with exceptions only if the mother's life is in danger, or in the case of rape and incest. Those instances require a police report to be filed. The state also adopted what it called an "abortion trafficking" ban, which bars taking minors to other states for abortion care. Family members can sue doctors for thousands of dollars if they perform an abortion, and doctors may face criminal fines and even prison time.
Idaho also became the only state in the country to stop tracking maternal mortality rates. Activists say it's like they don't want anyone to know how deadly their decisions might be.
I highly recommend the This American Life episode on the subject (ep 792 - When To Leave). The episode takes place before the OB-GYN actually decides to leave Sandpoint, and brings some thoughts to the idea of why many families - including myself and some of my family - can no longer call these states like Idaho home. The return of theological hatred-is-the-point laws and governance in places like Idaho is just outright terrifying. They're going to become (and in some ways already are) incompatible with modern, fair, and just human existence.
And yet they wonder why they are flyover states. It's best to just fly over them.
See, that's the batshit insane thing about this whole situation: these conservatives are so brainwashed that they typically don't care why people don't want to be around them. They often view it as a good thing that they're in fly-over states/counties. So long as reasonable people with brains (and all women, and all lgbtq+ people, and all pregnant people, and all non-christians, etc etc) are excluded or subjugated, they feel like they've "won."