There's been a lot of winning going on in the Gem State lately.
The legislature in Idaho just passed a bill that would criminalize transgender surgery on minors, punishing it the same way they would genital mutilation with the potential of life in prison.
Now, the Idaho Republicans have gone ahead and topped themselves. A new law passed through both houses of the state legislature and is sitting on the governor's desk that would ban abortions past six weeks.
It is the first pro-life bill passed by a state that is modeled after the Texas abortion ban bill.
From the Washington Post:
The Idaho House on Monday approved a Republican bill that would ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, becoming the first state to copy parts of the restrictive Texas law that has banned most abortions in the state.
The vote was 51-14.
The Idaho Senate approved the bill earlier this month. The measure heads to Gov. Brad Little (R), who has supported similar abortion bans but has not commented on this particular bill, which includes exceptions for rape, incest and medical emergencies.
This is winning.
This is unashamedly standing up for the right to life.
The Idaho bill, however, does not go quite as far as the Texas bill.
While they wait for the Supreme Court ruling, Republican lawmakers in at least 12 states have introduced bills modeled after the Texas ban, which employs a highly unusual legal strategy: empowering private citizens to sue anyone who helps facilitate an abortion after the legal limit.
While Idaho lawmakers embraced the novel enforcement strategy behind the Texas law, they also made several significant changes to the legislation. The Idaho version of the bill narrows the list of people who can sue and be sued. Unlike Senate Bill 8 in Texas, which allows lawsuits against anyone who helps facilitate an abortion, from the receptionist who schedules the procedure to the Uber driver who takes a patient to their appointment, the Idaho law only permits lawsuits against abortion providers. They could be sued for up to four years after the abortion.
The Idaho legislation can only be enforced by family members, including the father of the fetus, and the fetus's siblings, grandparents and aunts and uncles, as opposed to any private citizen anywhere in the United States, as the case in the Texas law.
The Idaho bill offers at least $20,000 to anyone who sues successfully.
Ahead of the vote, state Rep. Barbara Ehardt (R), who co-sponsored the legislation, emphasized that the Texas ban has "withstood three challenges," referring to the three occasions in which the U.S. Supreme Court passed up an opportunity to block the law since it took effect in September.
"Abortion is not a constitutional right," Ehardt said. "The Supreme Court in 1973 did something that was never allowed in the first place."
This may be a little more measured than the Texas bill, but it's still a victory for the pro-life movement.
It's good to see states finally realize they have nothing to lose by standing up for life and unashamedly supporting bills that would kill the abortion industry.
To all the spineless RINOs out there: this is how you fight.
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