Action Center

On June 27, 2024, the Supreme Court dismissed the case of Moyle v. The United States, which challenged the Idaho abortion ban to clearly define if the law conflicted with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (“EMTALA”). This would grant the right for women to have an abortion in cases of a medical emergency, oftentimes in cases such as rape, incest, and saving the life of the mother. This ruling was dismissed certiorari, sending it back to the lower courts and granting emergency access to abortions for women in Idaho without a clear outline to ensure the dismissal of Idaho’s ban in these scenarios.

Abortion access is a life-saving policy. Being denied access to abortion drastically harms one’s mental health, and this has been shown in the six months that followed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade in 2022, where there was a significant decline in women’s mental health. An ongoing study conducted by Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), titled “The Turnaway Study,” has explored the ongoing effects of these detrimental abortion bans. Forcing birthing individuals to carry pregnancies to term leads to feelings of powerlessness, hopelessness, seeing no way out of their situation, and sometimes resulting in desperate measures that put lives at risk. For women with reproductive health concerns, for children who are victims of abuse, for the LGBTQIA+ community, for those living in rural communities, for the unhoused and housing insecure, the need to have safe access to abortion and equitable health practices is amplified by these intersections. SCOTUS must grant the right to abortion back to the people, reinstating it as a constitutional right to ensure bodily autonomy and support the mental, physical, and socioeconomic well-being of all.

Here at Vibrant Emotional Health (Vibrant), our job is not limited to crisis care, where we meet folks in their times of dire need. We are also called to advocate for policies and laws that improve and protect the well-being and livelihood of those most vulnerable and historically harmed. We will continue to demand justice and call for better policies to support the mental well-being of all. Our direct service work is most effective when we utilize our influence to shift the laws and policies that negatively impact the individual and collective mental and emotional health. We will continue to use our platform to affirm reproductive autonomy for birthing individuals and examine how we can continue to serve individuals when and how they’d like to receive mental health services.

This can happen in many ways, both at an individual level and on a communal level. It is prevalent more now than ever to continue personal and collective education. By using evidence-based studies and research to bolster our positioning and to know who is most affected by these laws, we can ensure our actions are intentional and thoughtful. We can have continuous conversations with our colleagues, even bringing the SCOTUS decisions into meeting spaces and thinking up new ways to support each other. When we build our programs to center those most vulnerable and harmed, we create more holistic and robust services that, in turn, save more lives.

In addition, we can continue to get involved outside our work by writing to our local representatives and connecting with the organizations doing the work to fight for reproductive justice across the country:

Resources for folks in Idaho:

https://idahoabortionrights.com/

Resource/Literature guide on Repo Justice: https://idahoabortionrights.com/reproductive-justice-action-resource-guide-idaho/

https://www.idahocsh.org/