Leaders of Idaho and Alabama have the same impulse: coercion and control. They can succeed because they obfuscate their aims by getting us to debate topics like “sanctity.”
The Alabama Supreme Court made this abundantly clear when they ruled that an embryo is a person. While the Court’s chief justice noted that “wrath of a holy God” informed his decision, he failed to mention the decision’s terrible premise: to keep a tiny collection of frozen cells intact, the Court had to kill some freedom.
I know it can sound like hyperbole. But our freedom is under attack and freedom is losing.
Mere hours after the Alabama ruling, medical clinics that perform in vitro fertilization (IVF) paused their work. The threat of each embryo becoming a wrongful death case is too great for an IVF provider to risk.
Women who might need this help to become pregnant no longer have this option.
Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobb’s Decision to strike down a 50-year precedent that affirmed abortion rights nationally, GOP supermajority states like Idaho and Alabama have fought to leverage that ruling into taking away freedom for women.
Idaho led that fight by seeking to outlaw traveling out of state to seek an abortion. It’s very ugly. Don’t get caught up in the intentionally confusing debate over “morality.” It’s very simple: rightwing politicians want to use the Idaho government to stop people from driving to Washington. Period. Idaho’s Legislature continues to seek ways to douse freedom—every day they are in session we risk losing freedom
How these crass politicians stay in power is no mystery.
Far-right politicians wrap themselves in thick, chaste cloaks of self-proclaimed virtuousness that shields them from facts; and, often, such as when they seek to force rape victims to endure pregnancy, they are immune to basic decency.
They do this to outlaw a woman’s rights to control her body. They do this as a broader agenda of destroying our democracy, destroying freedom, and ushering a kind of government that is much more authoritarian.
We have lost many freedoms under the constant attacks of Idaho’s far-right movements. We stand to lose many more freedoms while the far-right holds sway over Idaho’s government. That is why I am running to be Idaho governor in 2026.
We need Idaho voters to look at Alabama’s ruling for what is: the wrongful death of freedom.