Idaho’s law against “abortion trafficking” can be enforced, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Dec. 2.
Groups that challenged the law are unlikely to succeed in their claims that the statute infringes on their First Amendment rights, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled.
The groups had argued the law, which bars recruiting, harboring, or transporting a pregnant minor with the intention to conceal an abortion from the minor’s parents, was unconstitutionally vague. The judges disagreed.
“Certain conduct is either clearly proscribed by the statute, such as providing transportation and shelter to minors seeking abortions in other states; clearly not proscribed by the statute, such as soliciting donations to organizations that support pregnant minors seeking abortions; or, in the case of conduct that might be understood as ‘recruiting,’ is subject to an “imprecise but comprehensible normative standard,” U.S. Circuit Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote for the panel….