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Appeals Court Rules In Favor Of Idaho Woman Arrested For Abortion

An Idaho woman who faced criminal charges for having an abortion won a victory at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Friday.

The federal court found several Idaho restrictions on abortion to be unconstitutional.

Jennie McCormack of Pocatello was charged under a 1970s-era law that requires second trimester abortions to take place in a hospital and makes it a crime for a woman to perform her own abortion. McCormack had used abortion-inducing pills purchased off the Internet to end a pregnancy.

But the case also took on a more recent Idaho law that bans abortions after 20 weeks. For that, McCormack’s attorney Rick Hearn signed on as a plaintiff. He’s a lawyer and a doctor. He got both laws overturned.

“It’s just a good day for me, for Jennie, and I think for constitutional rights in Idaho,” Hearn said.

The court found that requiring hospitalization places an undue burden on a woman trying to obtain an abortion. And it said the 20-week so-called Fetal Pain law categorically bans some abortions before viability, in violation of Supreme Court precedent.

Copyright 2015 Northwest News Network

Jessica Robinson
Jessica Robinson reported for four years from the Northwest News Network's bureau in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho as the network's Inland Northwest Correspondent. From the politics of wolves to mining regulation to small town gay rights movements, Jessica covered the economic, demographic and environmental trends that have shaped places east of the Cascades. Jessica left the Northwest News Network in 2015 for a move to Norway.