Along WA-ID border, abortion laws create confusion for health care providers

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned last year, lawmakers in Olympia and Boise have been pursuing vastly different goals on abortion access, which has left health care providers confused.

Idaho had a trigger ban that made abortions illegal after the Supreme Court's ruling in the Dobbs decision.

Washington has not only been protecting abortion access, lawmakers have been working on legislation that shields abortion providers from extradition or losing their medical license.

Between Boise and Olympia, communities are dealing with the repercussions of the new legal landscape, places like Spokane and Coeur d'Alene or Moscow, Idaho, and Pullman, Washington.

"It's about six miles of highway that separate Pullman and Moscow. But it's just really a short skip across there," says Samantha Wohlfeil, a staff reporter at The Inlander who has been writing about abortion access along the Washington-Idaho border.

Wohlfeil says state lines didn't use to mean much for daily living in these places. She says she grew up in Pullman and used to go back to school shopping across the border in Moscow.

Now, more people have been traveling from Idaho into Washington seeking abortions.

"More than 53% of the abortion patients in Pullman in 2022 came over from Idaho," Wohlfeil says. "Interestingly, in Walla Walla, which is a little closer for some of the southern Idaho folks, they went from having 0% of their abortion patients in 2021 come from Idaho to 50% in 2022."

While lawmakers in Boise and Olympia work toward very different goals on abortion access, providers are confused about what is and isn't safe.

Wohlfeil spoke with a doctor in Idaho who has a patient who had a pulmonary embolism during a previous pregnancy and had heart failure. Now the patient is pregnant again and at a serious risk of a heart attack or stroke. The doctor doesn't know whether it's possible to terminate the pregnancy to save the life of the mother without being convicted of a felony because of the way the Idaho law is written.

Wohlfeil also spoke with an abortion provider in Washington who used to practice in states that have since banned abortions.

"Now, he's saying that he doesn't want to even go there to visit because he's not sure if he's subject to arrest when he steps foot into those states, even though the care that he provided in the past was legal at the time," Wohlfeil says.