At 16 weeks pregnant, Rebecca Vincen-Brown received devastating news. Her fetus had several structural defects, including a choroid plexus hanging in the brain, a heart rotated on its axis, a horseshoe kidney, no detectable bladder or diaphragm, a displaced stomach and missing fingers on her right hand.

Her options were limited. She could continue the pregnancy, risking serious health complications such as preeclampsia or hemorrhage, face a miscarriage that could jeopardize her fertility, or seek an abortion.

Vincen-Brown chose an abortion, but Idaho’s strict abortion bans left her no choice but to travel out of state for care. After the first day of the procedure, her pregnancy ended in a Portland hotel bathroom, where she delivered the fetus while her baby was in the next room.

On Tuesday, Vincen-Brown testified before Ada County Judge Jason Scott, sharing her experience as one of four women who sued the state of Idaho over strict abortion bans that forced her to seek out-of-state care.

“If it had been in Idaho … I would have been able to get in the car at the beginning when I started the contract, I would have been driving to the hospital, I would have been with the doctors I trusted, I would have been in an environment on that I knew,” Vincen-Brown told the court. “It would have been covered by the healthcare I had and I wouldn’t have given birth while my two-year-old daughter was on the other side of the wall.”

The hearing marked the beginning of arguments in a weeklong jury trial for Adkins v. State of Idaho, a lawsuit filed in September 2023 by the Center for Reproductive Rights. The case represents four Idaho women who were denied abortions despite facing serious pregnancy complications, two Idaho doctors and the Idaho Academy of Family Physicians, a medical association.

This lawsuit aims to clarify and expand the medical exceptions to Idaho’s abortion bans, ensuring that doctors can provide the necessary abortion care to protect the health and safety of a pregnant person, including in cases of fatal fetal diagnoses.

The Idaho State Center for Reproductive Rights gave opening statements

The first day included opening statements from both sides.

Gail Deady, an attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the outcome of this case has broader implications because they represent not only the plaintiffs, but the hundreds of Idahoans who have been forced to travel out of state for abortion care.

Jim Craig, a division chief at the Idaho Attorney General’s Office, began his opening statement by saying that unborn children have a fundamental right to life.

“Evidence will show that every successful abortion results in the death of an unborn child,” Craig repeated in his opening statement. “Idaho has a right to protect those lives.”

Craig said there is no abortion right in Idaho, and it doesn’t matter how hard the plaintiffs try to articulate that.

“It’s based on assumptions and speculation about what might happen to people,” he said.

Four women share how Idaho’s abortion ban affected their pregnancies

Jennifer Adkins, the lead plaintiff in the trial, began her testimony by sharing the joy she felt when she discovered she was pregnant. But she explained that she later sought an abortion after learning that her pregnancy would likely end in miscarriage or put her own health at risk.

Like Adkins, Jillaine St.Michel told the court she was thrilled when she discovered she was pregnant, excited at the thought of giving her baby a sibling. However, at the 20-week ultrasound, she was devastated to learn that her baby had severe abnormalities, with organs and tissues measuring weeks behind normal development.

“I knew that getting pregnant was inherently riskier than not being pregnant, so deciding to get pregnant with a fetus or child that had no chance of survival seemed like an unnecessary risk to take,” said St. Michael.

St. Michel and her family traveled to a clinic in Seattle after contacting 20 clinics in neighboring states. She had to attend meetings alone. Her husband stayed behind to take care of their child.

“It was the worst four days of my life, I can’t describe it any other way,” St.Michel told the court. “Every day was worse than the last.”

Kayla Smith, the fourth woman named in the suit, discovered she was pregnant with a child on Mother’s Day 2022. After a complicated first pregnancy, she told the court she was excited to have a second child.

However, 18 weeks later, an ultrasound revealed that her fetus had severe heart defects. Continuing the pregnancy would not only put her own health at risk, but also involve watching her baby struggle to breathe because the heart defects would affect lung development.

“If I were to continue the pregnancy, not only would I be putting my life at risk of developing pre-eclampsia, but I would not have been willing to watch my son suffer and essentially gasp for air,” Smith told the court.

Ultimately, no doctor would perform the surgeries necessary to help her fetus survive. And even if a surgeon could handle it, her child would need a heart transplant before the age of four or five.

“I think everything could have been prevented,” Smith said, crying on the stand during the trial, referring to what might have been different if she had been able to get an abortion in Idaho.

The first day of the trial ends with testimony from the Boise OB-GYN

Tuesday’s trial day ended with the testimony of dr. Emily Corrigan, an OB-GYN at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise, who is also the physician plaintiff. Corrigan discussed different types of pregnancy complications and situations where abortion is used as the standard of care.

Idaho’s abortion ban says doctors must use “good faith medical judgment based on the facts known to the doctor at the time that the abortion was necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.”

Corrigan said Idaho’s abortion ban is vague because it doesn’t use medical terminology. Since then, she has met with lawmakers, testified before them, and ultimately filed this lawsuit to address her concerns about the ban.

The trial is scheduled to end on November 21.