Idaho legislators introduced the “abortion trafficking” legislation in February. The law added a new section to Idaho code that made it illegal for an adult to help a minor procure an abortion “with the intent to conceal” the abortion from the minor’s parents or guardian. Gov. Brad Little signed the law on April 6, and an emergency enactment provision meant it went into effect in early May, about two weeks before the Swainstons traveled to Bend with Kadyn’s underage girlfriend.
The law had abortion access advocates on high alert, and it was challenged in court by an Idaho attorney, the Northwest Abortion Access Fund and Indigenous Idaho Alliance in July. By then, an investigation into the Swainstons was already underway.
“I think that case and others like it is just an example of the reality that post-Roe America is forcing everyone to evaluate,” said Kelly O’Neill, an Idaho attorney for Legal Voice, in an interview with the Statesman. Legal Voice, a nonprofit advocacy group for gender equity is part of a cohort that sued the state in July over the abortion travel law.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court reversed federal abortion protections in June 2022 with the repeal of Roe v. Wade, Idaho has instated some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. They include a complete ban on abortions except when the life of the pregnant person is at risk or in cases of rape or incest that have been reported to police.
The merit is that the problems people in E WA and E OR have are more similar to the problems people in Idaho have than the people in W WA and W OR. The farmers and whatnot get really poor representation in WA and OR because most of the population lives in the urban centers. The wealth generated by the urban areas doesn’t really make it to the rural areas, since it tends to be reinvested into the larger cities.
And that’s a constant complaint from people in E. WA. Most of the legislation targets issues in the western part of the state, and those in the east largely get shafted.
That said, the most vocal group(s) in favor of splitting E WA and OR seem to want it for very different reasons. They’re less interested in legislative solutions to assist in farming (e.g. right to repair, water access, etc) and more interested in “owning the libs” or whatever nonsense. That’s where the “mixed” part of this is. There are very real concerns people in the rural parts of both states deal with, but their spokespeople ignore all that and spin it into some BS cultural war nonsense. Your average farmer doesn’t really care if Tim and Jim get married downtown, they care that they can keep their equipment working during harvest season and that they have enough water to keep the crops healthy throughout the year.
So I’m against splitting either state, but mostly because the proponents are nutjobs. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t merit to the idea given the very real issues people have in both states.
Thanks for the well-written, thoughtful reply.
I’m not convinced by the “poor representation” argument though. Every democracy I’ve ever heard of has some kind of “proportional representation” baked-in to it which rather naturally means that regions with gazillions of people in them will get more legislative attention than regions that are sparsely populated. How else would one organize it that would give farmers and other rural dwellers an equal voice as all those city folk? Allocation of representation by square mileage? Maybe there are tweaks that are being done, or that could be done, but I haven’t given the issue a lot of thought, maybe because I come from a tiny little state (both pop. & land area) and it’s pretty much understood we wouldn’t have the clout in D.C. that, say, MA would have, and that always seemed like “well of course, how else would it work and still be fair?” even if we were overlooked or, as you say “got the shaft” intermittently.
If people in E. WA were so concerned about not getting represented, maybe they could look to the kind of people they consistently elect. For example, CMR, who never met an orange ass she didn’t want to kiss but has done virtually nothing of note over her long time in office. Then there’s the premium Christofascist and domestic terrorist Matt Shea.
And finally, off the top of my head, there’s the soon-to-be-former-mayor of Spokane Nadine Woodward who’s done fuck-all in office but is happy to cozy up on stage in public with the likes of Shea and others of his ilk. You’re saying that E. WA is wanting “good” representation, but look at who voters are electing, over and over again. Are they electing them for promising to go up against Big Ag Tech on behalf of farmers? I think not.
I’d love to find out that it was true that these right-wing secessionist-type fantasies were motivated mostly by sensible economic concerns (like right-to-repair, which I’m totally in favor of from what (little) I know of it) and environmental protection concerns (i.e. scientific management of water supplies with the good of the people and not corporate profits in mind, and with an front-and-center acknowledgment of anthropogenic global warming, including global warming contributed to, potentially, by farming practices - again not my area of expertise). I’d love to hear that, in the eyes of the aggrieved secessionists in the PNW, it’s 110% fine for old Tim and Jim to hook up down in, say, Rockford, and live happy lives together, but instead what we get is domestic terrorism at “gay friendly” churches.
As you say, the secessionists are primarily, as far as I can tell, E.OR/E.WA/ID Christofascists looking to establish a theocracy. If they were just regular, non-theocratic, non-totalitarian, anti-book-ban, pro-science, thoughtful people who weren’t dripping with hatred about Those (other) People, I might be be able to listen to them and reason with them and those allegedly-“over represented” people in the west might be happy to do the same. As it stands now though, they’re just seditionists who are hoping to “get ahead” through violence and intimidation.
Notes:
In the US, the majority gets much more representation than their population has due to a mixture of FPTP and gerrymandering.
Look at statewide elections vs legislature representation, most WA elections go ~50-55% to the Dem, and 40-45% to the Republican, with 5-10% going to independents and third parties. Here’s the state legislature breakdown:
WA is actually one of the better states at not gerrymandering districts (though not Fed seats, 80% went to Dems), however, if elections were proportional, I’d expect 1-3 Senators and 3-6 House reps to be independent/third party, and probably more if people no longer feel obligated to vote strategically.
Oregon is in a better spot since they actually have an independent and a third party in their Senate, though their House is also a bit skewed vs other statewide elections (58% D, 42% R in House, must governor elections go ~50/45%, so the independent/third party vote is getting absorbed by D).
Other states have a much bigger disparity, and that’s due to gerrymandering. For example, Idaho, which is usually pretty similar to WA and OR in terms of statewide elections partisan split (like 50-60% R, 35-45% D), has a very skewed legislature (80% R in the Senate, 84% R in the House, no independents or third parties).
I wish we’d move toward proportional representation for state legislators, I think that would solve a number of problems since it would eliminate gerrymandering.
If we keep state boundaries the same, implement proportional representation where people vote for parties for the House and the parties select the reps. Here’s how I see it working:
If 3 is unpopular, we could instead just have a ranked statewide primary where you vote for your favorites and the top N get seats. However, I worry that would geographically centralized reps since population centers would probably produce a disproportionate number of candidates. Also, this could encourage career politics, since the same candidate is likely to win one of the seats year over year. It would also be weird because “your” rep could change each election.
I think a lot of this is just reaction to the statewide control the other party has.
I currently live in Utah, which is very conservative, yet our statewide officers tend to be pretty moderate and the Dem candidates are, imo, unelectable because they’re reacting to conservative control in the rest of the state. It doesn’t help that we just gerrymandered the crap out of our federal seats to ensure all four go to Rs (we had one go to a moderate Dem, can’t have that in a state with 25-30% Dem vote). I think my state should move to proportional representation to even out the state legislature and fix our stupid congressional maps (we should have one Dem district and one up for grabs).
So nutjobs like Shae are a symptom of a feeling of lack of representation. If you push people too much in one direction, they’ll overcorrect too far in the other.
I agree. I’m merely saying I think they have a point. There’s a very obvious demarcation at the Cascade mountains where culture and needs are very different on either side. Traveling from one side to the other is like going to a completely different state. Imo, this is how the states should’ve been formed:
I grew up in W. WA until I moved out (still have lots of family there), and that tension was always there. I’m now in Utah and considering moving to E. WA or E. OR when I retire, mostly because I like sun but want to be close to the awesome hiking in the Cascade and Olympic mountains.