Idaho Republican Party: It's Okay If The Baby Containers Die

Boxes don't have feelings.

Idaho Republicans held their annual convention over the weekend and added a plank to the party platform calling for a complete ban on abortions, with no exceptions. No, not even to protect the life of a pregnant patient, because that would be an exception, now wouldn't it? The anti-abortion language was added to the official Republican Party platform by Scott Herndon, who's running for the state Senate this fall, the Idaho Capital Sun reports. 

While language already existed in the platform classifying abortion as murder from the moment of fertilization, Herndon’s language added that the party supports the criminalization of all abortions within the state’s jurisdiction and said Idaho’s Constitution should be amended to include a “declaration of the right to life for preborn children.”

Herndon defeated incumbent state Sen. Jim Woodward in May's Republican primary and will be running unopposed for the seat, which represents the northernmost chunk of the Idaho panhandle. An extremist "abortion abolition" website described Woodward as an "incrementalist" on abortion, so not nearly extreme enough, despite Woodward's endorsement by "Idaho Chooses Life." Just to be on the safe side, the site declared Herndon had already won the 2022 general election before it's been held, which is at least logically consistent for a group that considers fertilized eggs actual people.

After the new language on abortion was added to the platform, the convention delegates rejected — by a whopping 412-164 vote — an amendment that would have added an exception to protect the life of a pregnant patient, because that would be cheating. Herndon explained there should never be any exceptions to the sacred mission of protecting fetuses, even if women might die, because that's the sort of compromise that's held back the anti-abortion movement all along.

“For the last 49 years we have essentially lost the argument in the culture because we have focused on abortion as the termination of a pregnancy and not the termination of a living human being,” Herdon told delegates.

After all, it's not like the fetus container has any better claim to life than the fetus does. The important thing is to keep the baby, who is already a person with full constitutional rights, alive until it no longer needs its container, which can then be discarded. If the container is so careless as to lose its ability to sustain the baby before the baby (a full person under the law) can live outside the womb, that's too bad, but at least every effort was made to protect the baby.

Herndon has clearly given this a lot of thought. You see, even though "life of the mother" exceptions are already so narrow that they endanger women's lives in hopes that a risky pregnancy might make it to term, that's just too much bias in favor of the person who's been born, Herndon explained:

“He also said the oath a doctor takes to do no harm covers such situations, and if a doctor is treating a pregnant person and the unborn child, it is in line with standards of medical care to determine who can legitimately be saved. To add exceptions would be to give priority to one patient over the other, he said.

We will never win this human rights issue, the greatest of our time, if we make allowances for the intentional killing of another human being,” Herndon said.

Consigning a woman to death in hopes that maybe the fetus might reach viability would not be intentional, somehow; probably more of a God's Will kind of thing. Nor did Herndon explain how the Hippocratic oath would prevent prosecution of a physician or other medical staff. But if it didn't, so what?

The delegates did, however, add an amendment specifying that miscarriages would not be subject to criminal penalties. The Idaho Capital Sun doesn't report what, if anything, Herndon may have said about that.

We took a look at the website for Herndon's "Abolish Abortion Idaho," which doesn't mention miscarriages at all, but which does support a bill that would treat all abortions as homicides, although it would leave the matter of whether women would be executed up to prosecutors, as in any homicide — to reassure you wimps, the FAQ points out that Idaho hardly executes anyone at all, and has never executed a woman. Oh, and before you go yammering on about ectopic pregnancies, Herndon's proposed bill has that covered too!

Subsection (6) of the bill states that the unintended death of a preborn child in the attempt to save the life of the mother in a medical emergency is not a violation of the law. However, doctors may not intentionally kill the child in their medical attempts to treat the mother. Ectopic pregnancies are often discussed without most knowing that in almost all cases, by the time an ectopic pregnancy is being treated, the baby has already died.

God, you people are all so emotional about baby containers!

But getting back to the state GOP: The convention also added — thanks to Herndon — a statement explaining that the federal judiciary has no power in Idaho when it comes to abortion, it just doesn't.

Idaho has the sovereign authority to defy the federal judiciary should they once again propose the fiction that abortion is a federal constitutional right.

Herndon's website handwaves away any concerns you might have about "nullification" by noting that a lot of states have legalized marijuana, so clearly federal courts have no authority over states.

In 2020, Idaho passed a "trigger ban" on abortions after fetal "cardiac activity" is detected; it's being litigated before it can go into effect. The law includes very narrow exceptions for rape and incest (an abortion would only be allowed with a police report of the crime), and to save the life of the pregnant patient in an emergency, as long as everything possible is done to save the fetus as well.

Herndon isn't a fan, and in a Facebook video following the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, explained there's far too much leeway for women to lie and murder their babies in Idaho's trigger law, as Newsweek explains:  

Those exceptions are "absolutely unjust," and give mothers "a free pass," he said in a video posted on Facebook last month.

"You don't put to death the innocent child for the crime of its father, but that's what this law would allow," Herndon said.

And he added that "if a mother really wants to kill her child, she could lie, say she was raped, file a police report and go get her child killed in the state of Idaho and nobody would be prosecuted."

You know how women are — you simply can't trust them not to kill their babies, but also, because it's Idaho, you can't require them to give their already-born babies lifesaving medication, because that'd be tyranny.

Now, it's probably worth noting, for the moment, that the Republican platform doesn't necessarily result in actual laws being changed, not even in Idaho. The 2020 GOP platform, for instance, included a call to repeal the 17th Amendment and a return to the gold standard, but Idaho is still, for now, electing US senators by popular vote, and even Mr. Herndon will let you donate to his campaign with fake Federal Reserve money.

In conclusion, we are wondering what rent is like in saner states the end.

[ Idaho Capital Sun / Newsweek / Vanity Fair / Fetus image created using Craiyon.com ]

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