After a handful of religious men (and one woman, Amy Coney Barrett) stripped women of the 49-year-old right to decide what to do with their own bodies, it was clear: If you were a woman, your body was no longer your own.

Ironically, in Idaho where I live, the abortion controversy is making it harder for women to have the babies they want. This year the Idaho Legislature defunded research into preventing maternal deaths, and the state also chose not to extend its postpartum Medicaid coverage.

Then in March, the only hospital in the northern Idaho city of Sandpoint announced it would no longer provide obstetrical services. Patients must now drive 46 miles for labor and delivery care. Why? Physicians were leaving the state, the hospital board explained, and recruiting replacements would be “extraordinarily difficult.” 

The board also cited the Idaho Legislature, which had passed bills to criminalize physicians for doing nothing more than providing nationally recognized “standards of care.”

In Idaho, once evidence of a heartbeat is detected in a fetus, abortion is illegal — except in documented instances of rape, incest or to save the mother’s life. A doctor I interviewed told me about a patient in her late second trimester of pregnancy. The fetus was severely malformed and would not survive, she said, and “standard of care” called for aborting this fetus. But Idaho law meant it had to die inside the mother.

Idaho legislators also say that bringing a minor across state lines for an abortion is “trafficking.” The hysteria continues with a new law that allows family members and the father of an aborted fetus to file civil lawsuits against doctors.

There’s also the legal push in courtrooms to bar mifepristone pills that induce safe early abortions. This spring, U.S. Solicitor Gen. Elizabeth Prelogar sent an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, urging the justices to block lower court rulings that had banned the drug.

She noted that the abortion pills have a safety record of more than 20 years, and no federal judge had ever overruled the FDA’s judgment about the safety of a drug. In April, the high court ruled that access to mifepristone may continue while litigants seek to overturn FDA approval.

Another drug used along with mifepristone, misoprostol, has many uses in reproductive health. It’s on the World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines. Yet this year, Wyoming banned the use of any medication, including misoprostol, that could be used for abortions.

Days before the law was to take effect, Teton County Judge Melissa Owens blocked it, pending the outcome of a lawsuit. The litigants are also suing to stop Wyoming’s near-total abortion ban, enacted in March. Judge Owens suspended that ban as well and combined the two lawsuits.

Federal law, which requires doctors to treat patients in emergency situations, trumps state law. But a federal investigation reported by the Associated Press, found that two hospitals — Freeman Health System in Joplin, Missouri, and University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City — violated federal law when they refused to provide an emergency abortion to a pregnant woman who was experiencing premature labor.

Doctors said the fetus would not survive and her health was at serious risk, yet they would not abort the fetus because a heartbeat was detected.

But when you look at the ballot box, abortion has fared well, especially in California, Vermont and Michigan, where voters added the right to abortion to their constitutions. A pro-choice judicial candidate won in a landslide in Wisconsin, and the states of Kansas, Kentucky and, most recently, Ohio, saw voters reject measures that could have led to bans.

Then this July 13, the FDA approved Opill, the first daily oral contraceptive available for use in the United States without a prescription. If that option had been available to me as a teen in the 1970s, I would not have had to sneak off for an abortion at age 16.

One thing’s for sure: if men got pregnant, none of this would be happening.

Crista Worthy is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation in the West. She writes in Idaho.

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But now, sadly, Wyoming has agreed to subjugate women. In March, Wyoming’s governor signed a “trigger bill” that would ban abortions in the state five days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, which it did June 24.

Around the West, other states including Idaho, Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota and Oklahoma also passed bills restricting women’s reproductive health soon after the Supreme Court acted. Texas had a tough law that banned virtually all abortions since 2021, although their new law, set to take effect in the next month, introduces even harsher measures — a near-total ban, even after incest and rape.

Fortunately, some Western states recognize the needs of women, and are already being sought out by women seeking abortions who are blocked at home. Colorado passed an act in March giving anyone pregnant the “fundamental right to continue the pregnancy… or to have an abortion.”

Three coastal states, California, Washington and Oregon, said they would be havens for women seeking abortions. In addition, Oregon allotted $15 million to help cover abortion costs even for non-residents.

Corporations are also becoming allies. Apple, Citi, and Yelp adjusted their corporate policies in Texas to include travel for abortions as part of health insurance packages. Lyft and Uber have promised to pay legal fees if their drivers are charged with the crime of “assisting” abortion patients.

Ironically, when Covid-19 was rampant, I often heard Westerners express a common sentiment about getting vaccinated, or not: “It’s my body and my choice.” I almost laughed, as that’s the cry of women who want the choice of becoming a mother, or not.

Before the Supreme Court decision was announced, I began talking to people about their views on access to abortion, and as you would expect, reactions were mixed, though no one I spoke to for this opinion agreed to be quoted by name due to privacy concerns. At a block party, a 22-year-old Jackson man, who self-identified as Hispanic, said he thought of abortion as “one of the worst sins.” Then he surprised me by adding, “But a woman should be able to make that decision.”

At a pizza joint, a fourth-generation Jackson resident I’ve gotten to know, said, “I don’t think the government should have a say about your individual body… The government should be building roads. We don’t believe in big government.”

An Indigenous man in his late 20s said, “Humans should be able to make choices for their own human bodies. Otherwise, we’re going back to slavery.”

Still, I get the sense that many well-intentioned men, trying to be supportive of the women around them, are opting to step back and let women fight this battle. This reticence has started to feel like men are saying, “Not my body, not my problem.” Perhaps our state legislators recognize this reluctance to get involved, thus freeing them to vote against women’s rights.

Sometimes an abortion is unwanted but necessary for a woman’s health. Sometimes an abortion is wanted but will now be illegal. I think whatever a woman decides must be her decision, not a ruling from the out-of-touch Supreme Court or from a male-dominated state legislature.

Five years ago, a friend was forced to travel to a Wyoming clinic to get an abortion after a doctor in Idaho told her that abortion was “wrong.” She was angry, and later when she told her father, he said he was proud of her for “sticking up for herself.”

“It was the best money I’ve ever spent,” my friend told me later. “I wouldn’t be half the person I hope to be without making that decision.”

Men retain control over their bodies, but in too many parts of this country, women no longer can. Deciding whether to bear a child is perhaps the biggest decision in any woman’s life. Controlling and criminalizing a woman’s choice is a tragic mistake.

Rebecca (Bex) Johnson is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She works and writes in Jackson, Wyoming.

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