My Church Can Do More for Idaho Mothers

By Colin Nash

Nearly ten years ago, my wife and I planted a yellow rose bush in our yard, a reminder of the child we never got to meet. My wife was far enough into her second pregnancy that the loss cut deep, and she needed a medical procedure to complete the miscarriage. We grieved, and later were blessed with our only daughter.

The evening our daughter was born, my wife collapsed with contractions at St. Luke's in Boise before we could get her a wheelchair. Our daughter arrived without complication, but the strain of postpartum recovery convinced me other families deserved better support.

That same year, I ran for the Idaho Legislature, where I voted on many bills affecting women and their pregnancies. Some were good, like extending postpartum health coverage to twelve months. Others were not, including an abortion ban that lacks meaningful protection for a woman's health and fertility.

Sometimes ending a pregnancy is necessary to protect a mother. She deserves a doctor who can advise her honestly without fear of criminal prosecution. Idaho's ban denies her that, which is why Idaho women facing serious complications travel to Utah hospitals for care, and why Idaho doctors have spent years begging for meaningful exceptions. As a lawyer, I know the moment a woman's life is at risk is not the time for her doctor to be getting legal advice. Yet that is what Idaho's law demands of our doctors.

Idaho's Proposition One, the Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act on November's ballot, would change that. It would allow abortion before fetal viability and in medical emergencies: when abortion is needed to protect a woman's life, or when waiting could seriously endanger her health or cause serious harm to her body. Those circumstances are consistent with the teachings of my faith.

This week I will baptize our daughter, now 8, as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with my wife as a witness to the ordinance. The next morning, in sacrament meetings across Idaho, a letter will be read from the pulpit opposing Proposition One.

I don't fault the Church for restating its long-held position on abortion. But I believe it missed a critical opportunity to do more for Idaho mothers.

The Church's own guidance allows for exceptions when a mother's life or health is in serious jeopardy, and when a baby has severe defects that will not allow it to survive beyond birth. Idaho law does not honor those exceptions. The letter says nothing about that gap, nothing about Idaho women flown by helicopter to Salt Lake City for care unavailable at home.

We have seen the Church engage differently. In 2018, the Church opposed Utah's medical marijuana initiative but also sat down with lawmakers and advocates to craft a compromise. Idaho families deserve that same engagement.

I don't expect the Church to support Proposition One. I do expect it to speak to the painful realities Idaho women face. And I hope it will call on Idaho's leaders, many of them fellow Latter-day Saints, to fix the broken law that gave rise to this citizen-led ballot measure.

I understand and respect moral opposition to abortion. My reasons for voting yes are different. As a husband and father, I will feel safer if Idaho doctors can do everything possible to protect my wife and give her the information she needs to make her own decisions while she makes the selfless sacrifice of bringing children into the world. My Church can do more to stand with her when she does.