Project Overview: With the overturing of Roe V Wade came a plague of misinformation surrounding reproductive health. This led to medical practitioners and specialists being misinformed and fearing prosecution for providing lifesaving procedures on pregnant women. Reproductive healthcare doesn’t just involve abortion, it includes emergency care, about the right to survive a pregnancy. The misinformation flooding the system is making everything worse. State laws are murky and full of vague language state by state, leaving medical professionals unsure if they’d be prosecuted for providing necessary, lifesaving care for their patients. To me, it is wrong that in a first world country, people are left to suffer because of this misinformation. My goal is to bring light to proper information about abortion care even in the most restrictive states.

At the beginning of my research, my goal was to do a state-by-state analysis on all 50 states, grouping them by the category of accessible reproductive care and inaccessible reproductive care. Once grouped by the category, I would have focused on the restrictive states, sharing the true extent and limitations of each state. Due to the timeline of the project this was not possible, so I shifted gears to focus on a more localized analyzation.

Idaho and Washington are on two vastly different pages when it comes to reproductive care, with Idaho representing a strong example of vague legislation. Prior to April of 2025, there was no clarification or indication that a medically necessary procedure would not violate Idaho’s Defense of a Life Act (2023). On April 11, 2025, Idaho Supreme Court ruled in Adkins v. State of Idaho that medical exceptions should be interpreted broadly, allowing patients facing life-threatening pregnancy complications to obtain abortion care and allowing medical personal to provide care without risk of prosecution. The release of this ruling changed my research considerably.